


summer into dust

by storytellingape



Category: Girls (TV), Peter Rabbit (2018), Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst and Humor, Awkward Romance, Coming of Age, Diners, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Kylux Adjacent Ship, M/M, Pushing Daisies References, References to Waitress, Set in the late 90s and early 2000s, Sexual Content, Smoking, Summer Love, Teenagers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-08
Updated: 2018-04-08
Packaged: 2019-04-20 01:36:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 32,180
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14250267
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/storytellingape/pseuds/storytellingape
Summary: Adam's been bussing tables at the diner close to three years. Then one summer, Thomas shows up wearing a hairnet and a name tag. Diner AU.





	summer into dust

 

 

* * *

The sun wakes him up. 

Adam unspools himself slowly, blinking against the soft light slanting in through the blinds as he pulls himself upright. He’s not in his house; this isn’t in his living room. None of the furniture is familiar — old 70s wood paneling on the walls, a black and white television sitting in the corner like the kind his grandmother used to have at her old place, bedraggled curtains — and he’s sitting on someone’s floor, wearing someone’s t-shirt backwards. There’s a weird stench coming from the shirt too, and it smells faintly like puke. 

Adam gags, stomach roiling, then staggers down the hall trying to locate his shoes, clutching at the wall for balance. The rest of the house is empty, but a couple of open doors reveal faces he knows from school passed out on the floor or the bed, some in varying states of undress. 

He wanders down to the kitchen. Worn linoleum floor. Old brown cabinets. A pan on the stove lined with grease. No one there. 

The bathroom has seen better days: the mirror above the sink spotty with rust, the inside of the toilet bowl grimy with mold. Globs of toothpaste have hardened into stalagmites on the sink, crowded with a number of products for back pain and hair loss. 

There’s nothing Adam feels safe touching so he wraps the bottom of his shirt around the handle of the tap to turn the water on. He splashes water on his face, once, twice, scooping some into his mouth before spitting it out. Then he just stands there in front of his reflection, trying to make sense of his geography, his face wet and dripping, his breathing loud in the otherwise silent house. He looks like shit, his hair hanging in damp strings in front of his face, his eyes bloodshot and red-rimmed. And he feels like shit too, like someone had dragged him in his sleep in gravel and took a battering ram to his head. He needs an aspirin, maybe three. 

No: he needs to stop drinking.

Adam remembers last night only in vague flashes: a party. Booze. A girl. Maybe some guy. He can’t remember if he’d been driven here or invited. Probably whomever’s house it was needed weed. That seems to always be the case. That’s the only reason he knows any of these kids anyway: slanging weed and prescription pills since freshman year for pocket money. Otherwise none of them would even look at him, the creep who smelled like sweat and mumbled to himself in the back of the room.

Adam finally finds his shoes in the foyer, along with his discarded backpack. Most of his things are still in there, as well as what seems to be last night’s payment for the weed, rolled in a wad and stuffed inside a sock.He hoists his backpack onto one shoulder before stepping out into the porch where the morning light hits him like a shockwave, stinging his eyes and making him double back. “Jesus,” he mutters, wanting to kill himself already. His bike is on the grass outside, lying innocuously next to a garden hose. 

Adam checks the gears and then sets the bike upright. At least no one’s stolen it. He’s been in this neighborhood a few times before his only friend in school moved out of Jersey and he still had a semblance of a social life. It’s a shitty neighborhood, most of the houses falling apart, buildings boarded up in plywood, garbage on the streets, people peering nervously through dirty curtains as he passes their house. He bikes through all of it, purposefully keeping his gaze forward, beating a couple of red lights in his haste to get home. 

Adam almost moans in relief when his own neighborhood starts to loom into view, boring by suburban standards, with rows of identical two-story houses rimming one side of the street. He doesn’t have a watch but it’s early enough that he can sneak into the front door without waking anyone. His grandmother is up though because she hardly sleeps these days, sitting in front of the television in her favourite chair, her head drooping to one side. Her hand is loose around a tea biscuit, and she’d forgotten to wear her glasses again, letting it sit on her chest where it hangs from a beaded necklace around her neck, even though watching TV without them gives her a headache. 

Adam presses a kiss to her temple, half in sympathy and half out of habit. “Morning gramma,” he whispers, before crouching down next to her and sliding her glasses back into place, careful to hold her frames by the tips of his fingers. She doesn’t stir. The volume on the television is set low, so it’s just garbled white noise she finds comforting. Adam gives her shoulder a gentle squeeze then wanders down the hall.

Climbing up the stairs without making a fucking peep is a skill he’s mastered over the years from constantly having to sneak out all the time and he’s in his room without incident, shutting the door behind him and locking it with a click. He needs to shower. His t-shirt had smelled the entire time. 

Adam chucks it aside along with his backpack, and then toes off his shoes, climbing into bed on top of the covers without a shirt on, his skin still a little clammy with sweat. He turns his pillow over three times, a ritual he’d picked up from summer camp, once for good dreams, another for luck. The third time just _because_ , and then closes his eyes. He can hear his sister in the next room, playing music, something familiar but too soft to name. His mom won’t be awake until a little later in the afternoon. She’s been putting more hours at the hospital and is often unconscious until she has to leave for work and make Adam and his sister dinner they can just reheat in the microwave. Whereas Adam’s dad — _well_ , he hasn’t been home enough times this week to be of consequence. 

Adam curls an arm behind his head, his breath warping into a yawn. He squints: light from outside is spilling in through his window, cutting lines across the ceiling and wall. There are pale gaps on the paint where glow-in-the-dark stickers in the shape of stars and an assortment of planets had been plastered when he was a little kid, some of them now covered up by movie posters he got a couple years ago at a Walmart. 

Adam doesn’t mean to sleep, but wakes around lunch to the blare of his alarm clock, sweating on top of the sheets, his head pounding like a pulse. His throat is dry as paper and he _smells_. “Shit,” he groans. “Shit, shit, shit!”

_ Shit on a fucking stick.  _

He’s late for work.

*

McGregor’s is just like any typical diner: the food is always greasy, the checkered floors grimy, the booths red vinyl in the same shade as the chrome-topped stools lining the counter. 

Adam’s been working there close to three years, first because he needed the money for a new bike and then because he just kind of enjoyed it: people in the kitchen yelling all the time, food spilling everywhere, utensils getting lost in the soapy water, the air thick with oil and steam. It was perfect.He sucked at it, at first, of course, was close to getting sacked twice but the couple who owned the place — old Mrs McGregor specifically — took pity on him, probably because he looked like a junkie in need of his next fix. 

Eventually he built a rhythm, working part-time four hour shifts after school and then doing full days on the weekends. He did everything: bussed tables, took orders, sometimes he even manned the grill while the cook, Big Ben, was on his smoke break. If the whole college thing didn’t work out, he could see himself maybe ending up as some kind of manager. He’d have earned it. He certainly has the aptitude for it. 

He’s late though, which hasn’t happened in a month. Summer has just rolled around so there are all sorts of kids hanging out at the diner, some from school, others just passing by, with nothing better to do and no other place to be because this town fucking sucks. 

Adam chains his bike in the back lot, before heading in through the side entrance where he’s immediately assaulted by a wave of heat from the kitchen, covering him like plastic sheeting. 

By the time he drags an apron from where a number of them hangs from a hook on the wall, sweat has started to beat on his upper lip and coat every inch of exposed skin. He can feel his shirt dampening under the arms which is always fucking nice. It had been a warm day outside but he’d forgotten how it was always several degrees warmer in the kitchen, like hell. The little fan rattling feebly above the shelf on the sink never did anything to dispel the feeling, and it certainly isn’t doing anything right now to make Adam’s headache go away, either. The feeling comes and goes. Right now, however, it has decided to stay.

“You’re late kid,” Paulo tells him, already elbow deep in sudsy water. He raises an eyebrow at Adam as Adam barrels in through the door. Adam likes Paulo because his wife makes the best paella and he always shares his lunch. “Where you been?”

“Overslept.” Adam sniffs, feeling sheepish as he clocks in. He pushes his hair out of his face, but succeeds only part of the way because it curls back against his forehead. He needs to get a haircut. It’s starting to look like he’s growing nutgrass on the back of his head. 

“Don’t let the new guy see you though,” says Big Ben, pointing a spatula still dripping in batter at Adam just as Adam glances up from tying an apron over his clothes. Ben’s face is wet with sweat, and he’s almost always sweaty anyway, a man his size constantly out of breath and huffing, but it doesn’t hit Adam until half a minute later why he finds this picture so jarring: Big Ben has actually deigned to wear a hairnet today, which has never happened in the last three years that Adam has worked at the diner even after the near-constant barrage of passive aggressive post-it notes Mr McGregor often left on the Employee Notice Board which is really just a flimsy cork board crowded with a number of electric bills and an ever-changing list of their shift schedules. 

Adam flits a glance at Paulo. It’s like he stepped inside the Twilight Zone: Paulo’s wearing a hairnet too. When Adam peers through the little window that separates the counter from the kitchen he sees Irene wearing her actual diner uniform, complete with the stupid hat. She doesn’t seem too happy about it, tugging at the hat every now and then as she takes people’s orders. There’s something else too, someone Adam has never seen before, a new addition to the staff it seems like, standing behind the counter arranging and rearranging the condiments. The guy has his face turned away from him so Adam can only see one side of his profile, which even from a distance, seems almost as severe as his haircut. 

Adam jerks his head in the guy’s general direction. “Who’s the new guy?”

Paulo wipes his hands on a dish towel before wandering over. He lets out a huff of laughter once he follows Adam’s line of sight. “That’s old Mr McG’s nephew,” he says, then the two of them watch as the new guy starts taking down notes in a floral-print pocket-sized notebook which he conjures from out of nowhere. “He’ll be in for a couple of months. To _supervise_ us,” he says, giving Adam a meaningful look.

Adam scoffs. “Supervise us doing what? We can manage just fine. I mean, look at him. He looks like an asshole.” He does: the guy’s wearing a crisp long-sleeved shirt buttoned up at the throat that’s just started to darken where sweat is matting it to his skin. His hair is impeccable and neat, parted stiffly to one side like a businessman’s. Adam scoffs again. The guy seems to be around his age, maybe nineteen, maybe twenty. Skinny on the side of lanky. Tall but not taller than Adam. Pale but not in a sickly papery way. Just: pale, like the inside of a fruit.

Paulo smirks beside him. “Be nice to him, Sackler. He’s a little uptight, but I’m sure you two’ll get along. You missed the introduction this morning. He’s actually a sweet kid. _British_. You’ll like him.” He winks. 

“Yeah, yeah,” Adam mutters, rolling his eyes and shaking his head. “So what, is he supposed to be our boss now or something?”

Paulo shrugs. “Or something,” he cackles, “Just roll with it though, don’t do anything that’ll get you sacked. _Again._ It’s not so bad, really. He’s just sort of…around, y‘know? He tries to help out when he can. Maybe you could show him the ropes.”

Big Ben hums in agreement, before shoving a plate teetering with several stacks of fluffy pancakes at Adam. “This is for table five.”

“He even has a name tag on,” Adam groans, shaking his head in disbelief. “Fuuuuuck.” 

Big Ben gives him a long look. 

Adam takes the plate from him after giving him a wry two-fingered salute. As he elbows the kitchen door open, he happens to glance absently in the new guy’s direction and then is finally able to glimpse his name tag in full: _Thomas_. The new guy’s name is Thomas.

Adam almost drops the plate in his hand when he walks straight into Irene.

*

The lunch hour crowd dwindles about an hour and a half later which means Adam can finally take a long-deserved smoke break. His arm is sore and he’s feeling a little cranky, the way he often does when forced to interact with people and play nice. Doesn’t help that he’s been entirely too self-aware of the new guy, Thomas, watching his every move like a hawk — not that Thomas has said anything to him yet, though Adam could feel his eyes on him every now and then, cold and critical as he bounced from table to table, serving food. 

The diner has been far too busy for the two of them to get acquainted. Adam hasn’t even introduced himself yet though he suspects he doesn’t have to, that the opportunity will present itself soon. He’s crouched down on the ground, squatting and reading a paperback he’d brought along with him, when the side door opens and spits out a harried-looking Thomas, who glances at him quickly before shutting the door behind him. His hair is out of its neat little side part, a lock slanting over his right eye like a comma. 

In Adam’s periphery, he can see Thomas staring at him brazenly. Then the moment passes and Thomas takes out a cigarette from his front pocket, lighting it up and taking a long drag, his head tilted back as he blows smoke rings in the air. Thomas leans against the wall, crossing one ankle over the other. There are sweat stains under his arms; it’s been a hot day. 

Adam forgets to turn to the next page, reading and re-reading the same paragraph over and over.

“I’m Thomas,” Thomas says, suddenly breaking the silence. Adam drags his gaze from his book, to the long lean lines of Thomas’ legs before letting it rest first on Thomas’ name tag then his face. He lingers there for half a second longer than is polite then turns his attention back to his book. He can hardly remember what it’s about anymore and blames the heat muddling his thoughts. He’d taken an aspirin for his headache earlier but while it helped dispel most of the hangover, he felt like he was walking on a cloud, muggy-headed and cotton-tongued.

“I know who you are,” Adam tells Thomas without looking at him. “I can read.”

A beat of silence, and then Thomas points out, “You’re not wearing your name tag.”

“Left it at home,” Adam replies, again without looking up.

“Is that from the cooler?” Thomas asks abruptly. Adam sighs, long and laborious. Thomas means the can of coke sitting next to Adam on the ground. Mrs McG isn’t so strict on Adam helping himself to refreshments every now and then but he doubts this concession will mean anything to her nephew. Paulo had been right about him for the most part; the guy seemed kind of uptight. That’s all he’s right about though because Adam resents him almost immediately despite the two of them being roughly the same age. He reminds Adam a bit of the popular kids in school, the ones that come from money and park their souped up Chevys in the faculty slot. And his hairstyle bugs him. No one their age wears their hair like that. 

“Are you here to razz me about every little thing? I just want to be left alone. Fuck, you know I’m on my smoke break, right?” 

Adam is self-aware enough to realize that he’s at that age where inserting _fuck_ after every word is still a novelty. He can only do it when he’s not at home or within earshot of his parents and gramma, which is why he takes advantage of every conceivable opportunity. He doesn’t expect Thomas to flinch, like the word had somehow offended his delicate sensibilities, though the jolt of regret that kicks Adam in the ribs is brief like a kick. 

“You shouldn’t steal,” Thomas presses on. 

Adam lobs a scowl in his direction, his sympathy receding. “Yeah, well, I was going to pay for this anyway,” he mutters. “I’m not some fucking thief. Jesus.”

“You were also late this morning, which, as you know, will be duly logged,” Thomas continues like he hadn’t heard all of that. He points at Adam’s head with the same hand holding the cigarette. He has pale fingers that look like they have never seen the sun. “Where’s your hairnet?” he says. 

“ _My — what? My hairnet?_ ” Adam looks at him disbelievingly before getting up and stretching his legs. The muscles in his calves protest by cramping up with a prickling sensation. This conversation is getting ridiculous so he decides to beat a hasty exit; he’s due back for cleaning duty anyway. “Is this how you make friends?” he asks Thomas. It’s a rhetorical question, obviously, but Thomas opens his mouth to respond anyway — though before he can continue the thought, Adam raises a hand to silence him. “Look, whatever. I’m not a thief, I’m paying for the fucking drink, and I’m going back inside because my break is over. Thanks for the — whatever this was. Conversation.” He rolls his eyes. “Enjoy your cigarette.”

He shoulders his way past Thomas who doesn’t move away fast enough and bumps into him. Over his shoulder, he hears him mumbling something under his breath, probably something inane, like a complaint about him, but he just shrugs it off and elects to ignore it. 

*

Adam’s shift finally winds down and then it’s time to go home. The diner is open until 10PM but there’s another guy that comes in for the later shift. As soon as said guy comes in — Adam keeps forgetting his name because he’s new — he throws his apron off and fucks out of there, yelling goodbye to Paulo and Big Ben who also happen to be in the midst of getting ready to go home, changing into street clothes. 

He’s unlatching his bike when he hears it: a familiar voice, followed by a sniff. It’s Thomas. Adam knows it’s him because he’s the only British person he knows. When Adam steps out of the shadows, he sees Thomas on his cellphone with someone, one of those flip-types that fit in your back pocket, like the kind his sister Caroline has.

Adam doesn’t have a phone, doesn’t really think he needs one when he doesn’t have anyone to call, no friends or anything resembling a social life outside of parties people are forced to invite him to on account of how he’s their main supplier of weed. 

Adam eavesdrops on the tail end of the conversation: “…I’ll be fine, mum! Don’t worry about me. Have you talked to dad at all?” He doesn’t hear any more than that because Thomas freezes him with a look before ending the call abruptly, all the while keeping his phone pressed to his ear. He looks like he’s just cupping one side of his face, fingers spidering over one ear; that’s how tiny phones are nowadays. Adam won’t be surprised if they invented one the size of a fucking tampon.

“What are you doing back there? Were you eavesdropping?” Thomas sounds entirely too defensive, his shoulders raised like Adam is about to attack him. 

Adam snorts, waving his hand at him to indicate that he’s come in peace. He still doesn’t like Thomas, but he’s not about to start an argument when he’s in too much of a good mood to finally be going home. To sleep. “I was just on my way home,” he says tiredly, mounting his bike and resting one foot on the pedal, his body tilted to one side. He slings his backpack over a shoulder, squints at the crowded parking lot: lots of sedans and a few motorcycles, a beat up Ford pickup he recognizes as belonging to one of their usual patrons. It’s dark, almost evening, the only light coming from the single lamp situated above the roof overhang, which throws a weak yellow circle onto the pavement. 

Adam’s exhausted from being on his feet all day, doing everything from wiping up ketchup spill to making hush puppies for the first time in his life, the recipe cobbled together half from memory, the other half through trial and error. He’s glad he isn’t on the night shift because it’s a Saturday and that usually means: families. Kids. He hates kids. And they don’t like him either. Something about his sheer size and his big, serious mouth. His dumb face.

“Everything all right?” Adam asks blandly, mostly because Thomas looks a little spooked, the hand clutching the phone now resting over his chest. Something about the lighting softens the sharp angles of his face, but Adam shakes his head and he looks like himself again, his lips pursed in consternation like a closed fist.

Thomas blinks, then blinks again, meeting Adam’s gaze in the dark. 

“My uncle is picking me up,” he says, an answer to an entirely different question. He pockets his phone, smoothing the wrinkles from his shirt, adjusting his little name tag which still makes Adam want to roll his eyes. He doesn’t though, just watches Thomas for a while standing awkwardly by the door, his pants neatly pressed, his brown leather shoes perfectly shined, completely free of scuffs. He looks like a car salesman. Adam doesn’t even know how Thomas had procured a name tag on such short notice. The lettering on his looks fancy, gilded. Adam had been telling the truth about having lost his though he never wore it enough to notice its absence. He probably left it somewhere or lost it in school. 

“You staying with them for the summer?” Adam asks, filling the silence that seem to drag on and on. “Your aunt and uncle?”

“Yes,” Thomas replies. “I’m on my gap year, so. But I’ll be going back to London to help my mum move out of the house by August. She’s getting a divorce. From my dad. _Obviously_. I mean, who else is she going to divorce.” He laughs nervously. “It didn’t work out.”

Adam nods, stopping himself from saying _of course,_ out loud. Thomas talks too much. And he can see what Paulo meant about Thomas being… _not so bad_. Still: he’s a little weird. But he’s only staying for the summer anyway, eight weeks more or less, and Adam thinks he can survive that. He’d survived the first three years of high school and came out of it largely unscathed, and if he’d survived that, he can survive anything. 

“See you,” he says, with a jerky nod, then boosts his foot off the pavement, circling around the lot as he speeds off. He doesn’t look behind him.

*

Adam remembers to actually wake up in time for work. He’s on the morning shift, and it’s a Sunday, the only day of the week he’s tasked with opening shop, getting everything ready. He’s in before anyone else is, keying the lock on the side door, a ring of keys jangling in his caffeine-jittery grip. Big Ben had entrusted him with the keys the day before, a whole set that led to a dozen other doors and cabinets Adam didn’t even know they had. He was pretty sure they didn’t even have that many and he felt like a fucking janitor, figuring out which key went in where.

It’s nice though, being alone in the diner when it’s quiet and not filled with the constant hum and buzz of people talking and complaining about their food taking too long or the intermittent ringing of the telephone. 

Window by window, the diner floods with light as Adam leans over the booths and zips up the blinds. The diner doesn’t open until 7AM and McGregor’s has been in business long enough for patrons to respect store hours, which means there are no unwarranted customers waiting outside on the curb or knocking on the door before the diner is actually open. Adam has a little more than an hour to start a pot of coffee, empty the dishwasher and refill the salt and pepper shakers, and take inventory of the contents of the walk-in fridge.He pours himself a mug of coffee once it finishes brewing, spiking it with a thimble of gin, before putting on headphones and mopping up the floor. He’s settled into it so much that he just does it without really thinking, which is when he suddenly hears a resonant thump coming from the storage room, followed by an emphatic: “Hello! Is there anyone there?” 

He ignores it for a minute, until in the midst of a song changeover, he hears the thump again. He’s not going crazy after all and it’s not the alcohol. He snaps his headphones off then vaults over the counter to throw the door to the storage room open but it won’t budge. It’s locked; he’ll need a key. He thumps on the door with an open palm, and inside there’s a shuffle and a squeak, the sound of something heavy hitting the floor like a sack of flour, maybe. 

“Who’s in there?” Adam says.

A second later, Thomas’ muffled voice speaks up. “It’s me. It’s Thomas. Thomas McGregor.” As if Adam doesn’t know which Thomas it is. 

Adam just stares at the door incredulously. “Which McGregor again?”

“What?” says Thomas from the storage room. Adam shakes his head, then remembers Thomas can’t see him and goes to fetch the keys. “Wait here,” he instructs then grabs the keys where he’d left them splayed on the counter. It takes longer than he’d like to fish out the correct one, and by then he’s so rattled by Thomas’ mildly infectious panic that when he pulls the door open, he lets out a crow of relief when Thomas all but stumbles forward into him, having been leaning against the door the entire time. 

Adam catches him by the middle before he can bowl the both of them over. He smells a little bit like flour, and there are patches of it on his head, dousing his hair.

“What the hell were you even doing in there?” Adam asks, shoving Thomas off at the same time Thomas jerks away to right himself, rubbing flour off his face with the back of his hand and only succeeding in swiping it around his left cheek even more. 

“Having a stroke at eighteen,” Thomas answers, pursing his lips so that it thins into a little line. He juts his chin. Frankly, Adam thinks he looks ridiculous, like a baby bird or a hamster. “What do you think?” Thomas says, then his cheeks flush in embarrassment, and he confesses in a quieter voice, “Locked myself in by accident. Like a complete knobhead.” He doesn’t look at Adam then, absorbed in staring at everything on the wall behind Adam’s shoulder.

“Right, sure. How long you been in there?” Adam asks, raising his eyebrows skeptically.

Thomas dusts himself off before responding. He’s worn shorter sleeves today, a minor concession to the heat. Adam can see the rest of him, meanwhile, the bend of his elbows, his skinny wrists, the strap of a leather watch, abraded with wear circling the right one, showing the wrong time. He can’t fathom Thomas being in there the entire night; somehow it seemed cruel to even imagine him in a situation like that, locked up in cold storage room, crying out for help with no one to hear him.

“A while,” Thomas says vaguely, cutting Adam off from further rumination. “I was going to open shop.”

“That’s usually my job,” Adam tells him. This is true. He’s the youngest out of all of them, doesn’t have qualms coming in earlier than the rest of the staff, because it’s not like he has anywhere to be most of the time, the only one without kids or pressing responsibilities. His own worst enemy is his sloth. Sometimes he just can’t haul himself out of bed at five thirty in the morning; sometimes he just doesn’t care. 

He hands Thomas the mop.

“What is this?” Thomas says, blinking at the mop then at Adam.

“You want to open shop right?” Adam reminds him. “That means making sure the floors are spic and span, so much so that people can see their reflections on them.”

“I thought you said that was your job,” Thomas points out, because being difficult is the only way he knows how to be even after Adam has saved him from the clutches of a confining storage room. Now Adam’s regretting it already; maybe he should have left Thomas in there for a while longer.

“You want some coffee?” Adam asks instead, taking a plastic cup from the stack on the counter before waiting for Thomas’ answer. He pushes the half-filled cup across the countertop, towards Thomas, and Thomas picks it up a second later before giving a languid pull, no sugar, no milk, taking it bitter and black, straight from the pot, making a small noise of contentment at the back of his throat. 

Thomas seems to shiver a little, closing his eyes at the tiniest exhale. Adam blinks once he realizes he’d been staring. The coffee isn’t even that good, just the regular tepid stuff that people got used to over the years, slightly nutty. He throws Thomas a bunch of paper napkins, gestures to his face and mumbles something vague about Thomas cleaning himself up. “You have some… stuff on your face,”Adam finishes lamely when Thomas just shoots him a questioning look. 

“Oh,” Thomas says, sounding grateful. “Thanks.” He starts to daub at his cheek, sipping his coffee every few seconds. 

Adam stops himself from staring; nothing good will come out of it and he might need another mug of coffee before the morning is even through. 

“What are you thanking me for,” he says, turning his back to Thomas and yanking the mop where he’d left it leaning against the broken jukebox. “That’s gonna be fifty cents.”

He thinks he catches Thomas smiling but can’t be too sure, already slipping his headphones back on as he uses his other hand to shove the mop into a bucket of soapy water.

The rest of the day passes by in kind of a haze: Sundays are usually the slowest in terms of customer traffic, though that changes often during lunch when people start trickling in from church, dressed in their best: the little families in their nice little suits and ties, the pretty dresses. It makes Adam want to put his hand in the fryer. Thomas would fit right in with the rest of them with his button up shirt and pleated pants. 

By the time the last hour of his shift rolls around, Adam’s gone on a total of six smoke breaks, seven if you count the ten minutes he’d spent just standing in the bathroom, whiling the time and pretending he was washing his hands. He doesn’t really smoke cigarettes, isn’t so stupid that he’d get high at work, and only spends the small pocket of time he has for ‘smoke breaks’ kicking empty cans in the back lot or watching birds fight for trash. Sometimes he reads a book. The last few days it’s been Michael Crichton’s _The Lost World._

He’d seen the movie a few years ago in middle school, back when his sister Caroline still allowed herself to be seen publicly with him. They used to do stuff together before high school, when Adam had been less weird and prone to getting into bloody fistfights, playing boardgames or building puzzles together while Adam held a pack of frozen peas over a swollen black eye. 

Nowadays she has a life of her own, squirreled away in her room on the summers she was home from college. Adam only saw her during mealtimes when she bothered coming downstairs at all. 

“You’re here again,” Thomas says, the door thudding loudly to announce his presence. Adam doesn’t even look at him. He’s paging through the last chapter of his book, leaning against the wall comfortably. He’s set a goal for himself: at least three pages back to back for every smoke break. He’s on the last third of _The Lost World_ , where it’s started to become interesting: people dying off in droves out of sheer stupidity. It’s a little funny; some of them had it coming. 

“That tends to happen when I’m on my smoke break,” Adam hums. “This is where people go on their smoke break.”

“But you don’t smoke,” Thomas says to him. This is not really news. 

Adam shrugs one shoulder, the universal sign for who gives a fuck. Clearly Thomas does. He gives a fuck about everything. Earlier in the day a little kid had come in wanting blueberry pancakes which they didn’t even have on the menu. The kid threw a tantrum, screaming his head off, and Thomas had legged it to the nearest grocery store to buy him some fucking pancakes, mixing the batter in the kitchen himself and serving them with a side of eggs and bacon. 

In the end, the kid had changed his mind, because kids are known to, well, _suck_. His parents had apologized profusely for the trouble, but Thomas had simply shrugged and assured them it was no trouble at all, smiling a polite smile as he ushered them out the door, calling out for them to _have a good day now, hope we see you again sometime soon_. 

Adam was embarrassed by Thomas’ earnestness more than anything though he wisely kept his comments to himself. It wasn’t his name on the sign outside; he didn’t want to get fired by pissing Thomas off. 

Thomas, who is the type of person to say things like _customer satisfaction matters, Adam,_ and _why does your hairnet seem to be perpetually missing?_ and _at the very least we made one child very happy today —_ they didn’t — while also flitting from table to table to ask people whether they’d enjoyed the food else their meal was for free. He was going to driver McGregor’s out of business before the week is even through. Adam is sure of it. 

Now he’s here, looking at Adam like he’s something he’d found at the bottom of his shoe and wanted to scrape off. Adam doesn’t understand how Thomas can go from one extreme to another. He’d been genial earlier, sweet even, when Adam had taught him how to operate the ice machine without making a mess and sloshing ice cubes everywhere.

“What’re you reading,” Thomas says conversationally. Adam looks up just as Thomas holds up his lighter, flicking it to life with a metallic noise. Thomas takes a long drag of his cigarette then starts coughing, banging a fist over his chest before sucking down another hit. He breathes out smoke that curls in the air like alasso before chewing on his bottom lip where the skin has broken in the middle. Adam has noticed that about him, among other things: Thomas bit his lip whenever he was nervous, or in thought, his nose twitching like a rabbit’s whenever Adam said something particularly mean that he didn’t like.

“You smoke too much,” Adam tells him, then wordlessly holds up his book to show Thomas the cover. 

“I suppose,” Thomas says, eyes scanning the page absently. “It’s a habit I picked up in boarding school though I try to limit myself to one cigarette a day. I should quit.” He stares at the cigarette in his cupped palm in a way that makes Adam entirely aware of how slender his’ hands are, delicate like he’s never seen another boy’s hands before. Adam’s own are clumsy, his fingers thick like fucking sausages. He’s gone through a growth spurt over the course of last summer, and had emerged from the other side four inches taller with too big parts that didn’t know how to move. 

“I should quit,” Thomas says again, softly this time. He doesn’t look like he believes he can or that he ever will. 

Thomas glances at the book in Adam’s grip, the one he’s stopped reading the second Thomas bumbled through the door. “Is it any good?” he asks after a moment.

“What, the book?” Adam says. He thinks about it for a second, then shrugs one shoulder. He reads pretty much anything he can get his hands on, from sci-fi paperbacks to historical novels. He has a lot of free time. It helps that no specific genre interests him which is kind of freeing. “I guess,” he decides. “I could lend it to you after I’ve finished. Have you seen the movie?”

“I don’t really have a lot of time to watch movies,” Thomas says. He breathes in another hit, this time pinching his cigarette between his thumb and forefinger before flicking it to the ground and grinding it under the heel of his shoe. 

Normally, Adam doesn’t think smoking is elegant; there’s really nothing pretty about it, the smell gets on your clothes, people’s breaths always smelled ashen, and there were all these cigarette butts on the ground that no one ever bothered throwing. Smoking only looked good in movies. But the way Thomas does it has Adam staring before he remembers himself. He pivots his attention back to his book where more pressing things are happening like the death of a secondary character. In his periphery, he sees Thomas smoking with a real flair about it, letting his wrist flounce just as he inhaled, flicking ash without ever looking to see where it was going to land.

“That’s so weird,” Adam can’t help but saying, mostly because half the time he has poor impulse control. “We’re kids. How can you not have a lot of free time?”

“I was always studying,” Thomas says, as if this explains it. “My school — _ah_ it’s kind of infamous for running students ragged. So I was kind of, er, just studying all the time.” Half of his mouth twitches up into a semblance of a smile, warping his expression completely. His nose has started to twitch. Adam wonders if he’s made Thomas nervous; the nose twitching seems to happen around him a lot, not that he watches Thomas all the time. 

“I have it on VHS,” Adam tells Thomas. He doesn’t know why he said that even though it’s true.“If you want, you could come over or whatever, and we could watch it together. It’s one of my favorite movies.” He doesn’t know why he won’t shut up about it either; it’s not even a great movie, not like Jaws, which he’s seen enough times to know all the lines by heart. 

Thomas pockets his hands. He really has the thinnest wrists. “All right,” he agrees.

“What?”

“ _What_ ,” Thomas repeats, looking utterly mystified. “Was that not a — did I say something weird?”

“Yeah, no, I mean,” Adam says, also confused by this turn of events. “You really wanna watch it? With me?”

“Yes?” Thomas says. “I know it’s popular, and I’ve been meaning to see it for the longest time anyway.”

“It’s good,” Adam assures him. “It’s great.”

Thomas gives him a funny look but Adam holds his stare without blinking. “I’m off Tuesday nights,” he blurts out.

Thomas nods, like he’s absorbing this information. “All right,” he says again. He gives Adam a shaky smile before disappearing through the side door only to poke his head out again a few minutes later. “Your shift is about to end, and we’d appreciate it enormously if you helped out in the kitchen before you’re to clock out. _And_ ,” he adds, raising his eyebrows and pointing at Adam’s hair which has started to frizz in the nascent humidity. “Please do something about your hair.”

“Sure,” Adam says absently, shaking his head before the door slams shut. He stuffs his book in his back pocket and shoves his fucking hairnet on, grumbling all the while before following after Thomas, locking the door behind him.

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

The first thing Adam does the next Tuesday is make sure the house is clean. Or at least the parts of his house that mattered are clean like the kitchen, his bedroom, and the basement where the old TV lived along with the ancient VCR that nobody ever used anymore ever since they got that DVD player two years ago. He’s up early for the first time in a long time, overcome with a strange energy that cuts through him like a knife as he makes the bed and kicks his laundry around in his room back to their usual hiding places. He does a few sit-ups on his bedroom floor as a way to expend the excess adrenaline, then has a run in his neighborhood until the sun starts to sweat on his back and his neighbors start cropping up on their lawns to wash their cars or turn on their sprinklers.

He’s still buzzing with leftover energy when the gets home to shower, his heart pounding rabbit-quick in his chest.

It hits him that he hasn’t had anyone over in years, not since Monty moved away to Connecticut and even then they hadn’t been friends in the real sense of the word. Monty had let Adam copy off him in Biology while Adam offered a kind of implied protection simply by being the big menacing kid always hanging around him, making him impervious to harm. He’d left without warning, didn’t even write or call. Not that Adam expected him to. They hardly ever talked about anything except schoolwork, sometimes comics, sometimes girls, inconsequential little stuff that didn’t matter at the time. He hadn’t even known Monty’s mom was dying of cancer and needed to be treated at a different hospital, not until after Monty moved away and the news spread like wildfire in school. Adam had considered them best friends until then. 

The kitchen is dirty, not gross or anything, just with plates still piled on the table from this morning and the smell of bacon grease in the air. Adam sighs and loads the dishwasher, with half the mind to leave Caroline a fucking post it note about pulling her own weight around the house; she’s not doing anything. The least she could do is help with chores.

Before long, it’s already 2PM which had been the agreed upon time during which Thomas was to swing by. He’s late, by ten minutes, then fifteen, then a full half hour, stoking Adam’s annoyance and his belief that he’d been an asshole all along and bailed on him. Wouldn’t be the first time someone bailed on Adam. Maybe Thomas had better things to do; maybe he’d changed his mind last minute. In the last few days they seemed to be getting along just fine though that could all have been a ruse. Thomas had calmed down somewhat with the micro-managing, and Adam could almost tolerate his incessant hovering in small doses. 

By the time old Mr McGregor’s clunky land rover noses up to the curb, Adam’s already half-dozed on the couch after beating his gramma in a game of Scrabble. The doorbell rings once, twice. Adam goes to answer the door, wiping drool off his mouth with the hem of his shirt. He’d slept on his face and could feel where his hair had flattened on the back of his skull, sticking up every which way. He smooths it down with a swipe of a palm before pulling the door open. 

It’s Thomas, because who else could it be. He’s wearing a long-sleeved blue shirt as if it weren’t so hot out, his hair looking softer out of its usual stiff part. The neck of his shirt dips low around his collarbones, and even those are pale like the rest of him though Adam doesn’t know how or why this particular piece of information is relevant even somehow striking to him.

“I’m terribly sorry, my uncle got lost,” Thomas says, looking sheepish. If he flushes, Adam chalks it up to the heat. This summer is a hot one, often leaving Adam slow to wake and groggy in the mornings. It leaves lines of heat pressing onto his skin where his shirt sleeves cling to his arms when he bikes around town under the beating sun, and he’s gotten almost used to it, to squinting constantly at the sky and the beads of sweat dotting the back of his neck and his hairline.

“Hi,” Adam says, blinking at Thomas.The two of them glance simultaneously at the curb at the sounding blare of a car horn. Adam lifts his hand in an awkward little wave as Mr McGregor putts past, rolling down the passenger window to poke his head out. “Be nice, you bleedin’ rapscallion.”

“He means me, don’t worry about it,” Adam tells Thomas, shortly after Mr McGregor has driven all the way down the street. 

Thomas blushes again, rolling his eyes at himself. “Sorry about that. I’m sure he doesn’t mean it.”

“What time’s he picking you up?” Adam asks, ignoring the apology.

Thomas lifts his little flip phone into view. It fits his hand perfectly but Adam could probably crush it in his fist without really trying. It’s the kind with small buttons; he can hardly imagine himself using one. His sister was on her phone all the time, texting and calling people but that’s because she has actual friends as opposed to Adam who has… pretty much no one except his stoner pals who only summon him when they need a fix. 

Thomas must have friends too if he’s got a phone of his own, friends who actually cared that he missed school or didn’t show up for a week because he came down with the flu. Now he’s stuck here, in Jersey, with a shady guy who smelled like a gerbil and worked for his uncle in the diner he owned with his wife since 1988. Probably Thomas could be doing something else but he knew no one in town and thought, what the hell. What was there to lose.

“I told him I’d call him whenever we were done,” Thomas says. “So.” He lets it trail off, curling his thumbs into his belt loops. 

“Right,” Adam mutters. He leads Thomas inside and then closes the door behind him. They have to pass the living room to get to the basement where Adam has all the necessary stuff, and that means running into Adam’s gramma. Adam’s not embarrassed by her presence per se but she’s practically a vegetable, watching TV most of the time and having to be fed soup every few hours because otherwise she’d forget to eat. She isn’t even that old, just in her early seventies, but when Adam’s grandpa died five years ago, she just sort of _stopped_ , like one of those wind-up toys that needed to be tuned every now and then, rewound to come to life again. 

“ _Oh_ ,” Thomas says when he sees Adam’s gramma curled up on her favorite chair which probably smells like her now on account of how she never vacates it only when it’s time for bed or a bath. “Good afternoon Mrs Sackler.”

“That’s my grandma,” Adam whispers.

Thomas nods at her again. “Hello,” he says. Adam’s gramma turns her head in their direction but otherwise she says nothing, dragging her gaze back to the television which plays a black and white movie with the audio warped and un-remastered. She loves those old movies. Adam used to sit next to her on the floor as a kid and watch them with her; he had loved the ones with dancing and singing in them, and also the ones involving the mob. It made him think about becoming an actor, living all those lives he never could, making grand pronouncements of love under a setting sun while orchestral music played in the background. Getting the girl. The boy. Falling in love. Finding treasure. Which almost always happens simultaneously in movies. Sometimes robbing a train.

“She’s practically comatose, it’s fine,” Adam assures Thomas who stands there in the living room watching his gramma long enough that it starts making Adam uncomfortable.

Thomas gives him a horrified look.

“It’s fine, she knows I’m joking.” Adam rolls his eyes. “Right gramma?” She doesn’t move, and Adam presses the remote back to her hands which feel clammy and thin as paper before showing Thomas the rest of the house. “Come on,” he coaxes, holding the door open to the den. Thomas follows. Adam lingers in the doorway for a beat too long, then shuts the door the rest of the way to Humphrey Bogart delivering his famous line from Casablanca. _Here’s looking at you, kid._

Adam snorts.

He realizes he’s barefoot when the cool wooden surface of the basement stairs touches the bottom of his foot. He turns the light on overhead and the bulb stutters to life after several feeble attempts, diffusing the gloom downstairs. There are shadows on the wall cast by the heaps of boxes Adam’s family keeps in the basement, filled with old toys and blankets and things they need to throw away or keep forgetting to donate to Goodwill.

Thomas gives Adam a long, probing look. Probably he thinks Adam means to murder him and hide his remains under the stairs, which is often the case when people show anyone the contents of their basement. Adam has seen enough movies to verify this fact. “Trust me, I’m a lot less harmful than I look.”

“That doesn’t make me feel very safe,” Thomas says. But he sounds like he’s teasing anyhow and then he’s taking the stairs one step at a time, running his fingers down the dusty banister peeling with paint. The basement is actually a little small, cramped now with the things they’ve kept in storage like his mom’s old exercise bike and shelves upon shelves of random bric-a-brac: books and VHS tapes and Adam’s dad’s cassette player with a tape of The Doors’ _Alive She Cried_ stuck in one of the decks. Then there’s the lumpy pull-out couch where Adam’s dad often slept whenever his mom demoted him after an argument, their first ever TV which Adam still remembered from childhood pushed to a corner of the room. Above the TV the boxy VCR sat gathering dust though otherwise it was still in good working condition. 

It was too hot to hang out here in the summer, but as long as Adam kept the window open and dragged the fan downstairs from the kitchen, the heat would be bearable. Besides, the floors were as cool as a cave’s though that could just be because he isn’t wearing any shoes. Thomas stares and stares, at the photo albums stacked haphazardly against one side of the wall, at the desk crowded with Adam’s dad’s gardening tools, at the bits of exposed wiring hanging from the ceiling, furred with a dusty layer of cobwebs. Then he parks himself on the couch, folding his hands in his lap, sitting there like a pale perfect doll. 

“This is nice,” he says, after a while. “Cozy. We don’t have anything like this back in London.”

“You don’t have a basement?” Adam asks.

“We live in a flat — an _apartment_ ,” Thomas corrects himself. “It’s not as spacious though it’s just as cozy. You’ll like it. Natural lighting in the kitchen, and big comfortable sofas. My mum keeps plants by the window though she always forgets to water them when I’m away in boarding school. She’s very forgetful. She always—” he immediately stops talking, wringing his hands in his lap and then cracking his knuckles.

Adam doesn’t know what to say to that so he turns the TV on with the remote. “I’ll get us some snacks,” he announces, then comes back with an armful of junk food he dug out of the cabinet: Doritos and Funyuns and a pack of gummy bears, two bottles of Gatorade he found rolling around in the freezer. He hands one to Thomas who accepts the bottle and then bangs it against the side of coffee table to dislodge the ice before taking an experimental sip. It’s the blue kind, Adam’s favorite. But he says nothing about that at all or how Thomas’ lips are suddenly shining with a sheen of blue. 

They watch the movie, all the while Adam tries not to recite all of the lines. He’s seated at the other end of the couch, slouched so low his spine almost hurts though he’s still too lazy to move. Thomas meanwhile is deeply engrossed in the movie, his legs crossed underneath him, half of his face hidden behind the pillow he’s clutching tightly to his chest. He’s left his shoes under the coffee table, tucked neatly side by side. It’s the same pair he’s been wearing all week, leather dress shoes with the laces ties primly in a tight knot; the stripes of his socks match the blue of his shirt. When he moves just a little, they rub the cushion of the sofa and drag further down his ankles. 

Adam doesn’t know why he’s started to notice things, or why he’s suddenly annoyed that a lock of Thomas’ hair keeps curling over his eyebrow even when he tries valiantly to flick it out of the way every now and then. He lets his gaze wander back to the TV. The rest of the basement is dark enough so that the only light is coming from the screen which bathes everything in a bluish-white glow, like a ghostly sun blinking in and out, in and out so that Adam can only glimpse Thomas in quick flashes each time: the furrow of his brows in the dark, and the hunch of his shoulders, the pale shell of one ear peeking above the curl of dark hair. 

The movie ends abruptly, and only then does Adam notice the time: late afternoon judging form the light outside and how it dapples the dust on the window gold. Thomas probably has to go home soon, but either he’s reluctant to or completely bowled over by how fucking amazing the movie is, unmoved from his spot on the sofa and still hugging the pillow. He might have fallen asleep but his eyes are open, clear, but a little flushed from sitting too close to the screen. 

“Hang on a second,” Adam says. His feet take him to his bedroom where he takes his bottle of gin out of hiding, buried under the loose floorboard of his closet where he knows his mom will never find it, not that she’s been around much these days though she’s known to snoop around from time to time. He’d ask Thomas if he got high but Adam doesn’t really like getting stoned anyway, or sampling whatever shady hybrid bud his dealer has him disseminate to the unsuspecting masses. He finds Thomas right where he’s left him, though now he’s curled up on the sofa, looking like he’s getting ready to nap. His legs are everywhere, long and languid. He sniffs when Adam appears with the gin, rubbing at his eyes with the heel of his hand. He still hasn’t put any shoes on.

“Do you want to…” Adam says, holding up the bottle and letting it speak for itself. 

Thomas tilts his head in response. “Yes,” he says, nodding fervently. His face splits into an almost manic grin. “ _Yes_.” 

They cut the gin with Sprite. It’s shitty gin, but Adam has always enjoyed the burn of alcohol down his throat, regardless of what it tasted like, how alcohol often muddles his thoughts enough to make him less nervous around people. He should be careful with the amount he drinks — it can’t be healthy — but he’s down to just one shot a day so he’s not worried, two if he works double shifts at the diner. And anyway, he can stop whenever he can. He’s bored most of the time; that’s why he drinks. No other reason. It’s not like he’s depressed. 

They play cards to pass the time. Thomas finds an old deck sitting amongst the musty detritus of Adam’s dad old BeeGees record collection. He’s great with his hands, shuffling cards with a speed and fluidity that has Adam reclining in his seat and almost breaking into applause. He’s done this before, clearly. They run through Go Fish, Omaha Hold Em, and then several rounds of Blackjack that smacks of strange rules that Adam is pretty sure Thomas has just invented on the spot. 

Gin often made mean drunks out of people but on Thomas it has the opposite effect: if anything he seemed nicer, loose, as if all of his sharper edges had been sanded down by the murk of alcohol. He gives laughs freely, talks too much and too fast, and eats Doritos by the handful, sending orange dust flying everywhere. His mouth and fingers are coated with the stuff, leaving faint traces on the upholstery. And still he’s the most interesting person Adam’s ever met. 

“Eight full of aces,” Thomas announces, a red gummy bear drooping from his lips as if to point at his winning hand. 

Adam raises an eyebrow, his head lolling where it rests against the arm of the couch. He crosses his legs and uncrosses them and nearly knocks the cards out of Thomas’ hand with his foot. “Where’d you learn how to play like that?” he asks, nudging Thomas with his knee where he’s sitting cross-legged on the dirty shag carpet. 

“Boarding school,” Thomas smiles. He fans the cards across the coffee table so flawlessly that Adam suspects he’s been tricked. 

Thomas’ phone starts to vibrate on the coffee table, skittering several feet and he scoops it up with the hand that isn’t covered in Dorito dust, mid-ring.

Thomas frowns down at his phone as he flips it open. “Bugger.” It’s the first time Adam’s heard him curse. Even when he’d dropped things, or bumped into people, or was caught off guard, often by Adam who tended to hover in the background, he didn’t curse. He said things like _oh you gave me a terrible fright!_ or _what on earth were you doing there?_ like some fucking character from a Jane Austen novel, but Adam has never heard him curse. 

“Your uncle?” Adam guesses, jerking his chin to indicate Thomas’ phone. 

Thomas’ expression is answer enough, but he still doesn’t budge from the floor. It’s late, later than Adam had anticipated. He’d heard Caroline tromping upstairs in the kitchen over an hour ago, heating gramma’s soup probably, then making dinner for herself, and then nothing, not for a long while. It’s dark outside now. The only window that peers up into the street shows nothing but the blue-blackness of early evening. No cars are driving past on the street. Outside, a neighbor’s dog starts barking. Adam’s missed dinner but he’s not really hungry. He doesn’t want to leave the basement. And it seems neither does Thomas. They look at each other awkwardly. Thomas’ neck looks really thin, here, like this, in the soft dark. 

“You can stay, if you want.” The words are out before he has any opportunity to stop them. “Sleep over.” 

The McGregors live all the way across the other side of town where all the people with money live, their lawns vast and well-tended. Mr McGregor is too old to still be driving at this hour, Adam tells himself. Really, he’s doing him a service. It’s the right thing to do. 

Thomas studies him, saying nothing for a minute. Then he sighs. “Oh, I don’t want to impose.”

Adam just shrugs. His mom wouldn’t care. His dad is only home some of the time. And his sister is practically a recluse. He says as much to Thomas who gives him a strange look, as if he isn’t sure whether to laugh. 

Eventually, he relents after a little more convincing, thumbing his uncle a text and firing another one then another. The whole exchange lasts twenty minutes and then Thomas finally flips his phone shut before placing it on the coffee table next to the half open bag of gummy bears he’d decimated under an hour. 

“I need to use your toilet,” Thomas announces.

Adam bursts out laughing.

*

They watch another movie — one of Caroline’s favorites — _Clueless_ because there’s not much else to do and the white noise of it is comforting while they lay on the pull-out couch, eating the rest of the gummy bears and passing the bottle of gin back and forth. Adam is drowsy from the alcohol which they’d been drinking in steady pulls throughout the night. They’d set-up the couch and everything: Adam had dragged a quilt over the cushions, still fresh from the dryer and smelling airy like fabric softener. The couch is still lumpy as hell but it works. Thomas doesn’t complain.

No one interrupts them, not Caroline to ask if Adam wanted any dinner, or his mom who’s just come home from the hospital after another 12-hour shift. Adam falls asleep with the movie still playing, face-first on the cushions on his appointed side of the couch. When he wakes, the TV is off and Thomas is clomping down the basement stairs rather noisily. Adam follows his progress all the way to the couch where he sits with his back to Adam, rubbing his face with both palms before kicking off his shoes and fishing his phone from his pocket. He flips it open and closed a couple of times before tossing it at the coffee table where the plastic makes a clattering noise against the glass surface. 

When he rolls onto his side, facing Adam, he lets out a noise of surprise, almost sitting up when he sees Adam awake, watching him with a sleepy gaze.

His eyes are strangely luminous in the dark, changing color again because of the light. Adam has noticed this about him too. He also realizes why they look so wet.

“Are you all right?” Adam asks.

Thomas lets out a laugh, a wet little laugh laden with misery. He doesn’t answer the question, just stares at Adam blankly or maybe at a spot behind him on the wall. They lie in silence for such a long time that Adam dozes, and when he stirs again this time he feels a hand in his hair, stroking it back from his face. He thinks it’s his mom at first, because it’s been so long since she’s touched him like this, or sat in his room and tucked him in. He moans in happiness. Then he remembers where he is — the basement — and blinks his eyes to find Thomas with his hand in his hair. His fingers still for a moment when their gazes lock before resuming their work, parting Adam’s hair in sections and pushing a curl behind his ear. He’s frowning while he’s doing it, as if the sensation of Adam’s grease-matted hair disgusts him beyond belief and yet he can’t seem to stop himself from touching it.

A tremor moves through Adam like an earthquake when Thomas’ fingers brush the shell of his ear. It’s innocuous, entirely an accident, but he jerks in response and grabs Thomas’ wrist without knowing why, halting the action. 

Thomas looks at him steadily. It’s unnerving how he can do that, like flipping a switch. One minute smiling, the next: _this_. “You have such long hair,” he tells Adam, and his voice is soft, swimming with the languid heat and stillness of the room. “In fairytales they symbolize a person’s strength, that sort of thing, so cutting a man’s hair may mean cutting off their strength. But you should really wash yours.”

“Yeah,” Adam agrees out loud. “It’s awful, isn’t it?”

“And wear a hairnet,” Thomas adds. “To work. Really, it’s only hygienic.”

Adam can’t help it. He starts to laugh. He presses his thumb against Thomas’ pulse point, rubs the soft skin there. He has such delicate wrists. “You’re really fucking weird,” he says.

Thomas smiles wryly. “That’s not the worse thing anyone’s ever said about me.”

“I can’t imagine the worst,” Adam says, only because it’s true. He doesn’t know where all of this is coming from, or why he suddenly feels an overwhelming wave of tenderness sweeping over him, pulling him under its tide. It’s the gin. It’s always the gin. Once he’d trampolined naked in somebody’s yard after one too many shots. Another time, he found himself curled up in a stranger’s tub, covered in his own vomit, his ribs decked in bruises. He couldn’t remember what led him to either moment. Both times, he walked home feeling like shit. Drinking always made him volatile: not angry all the time, or violent, just unpredictable. 

“Anyway,” Thomas sniffs, raising his eyebrows expectantly. “You can let go of my hand now. Your grip is starting to hurt.”

“Sorry,” Adam says. He pulls his hand back, then scratches his hair out of his face entirely out of habit. He’s still staring at Thomas when he asks , “Were you crying? Did you call your mom?” because of course he’s an idiot and has to ask.

Thomas tucks his hands under his cheek, like he’s preparing to sleep. Adam’s never seen anyone sleep like that before with their hands folded under their face like they were in some sort of fairytale. It’s weird but also interesting.

“Yeah,” Thomas says, his eyes already closing as his expression is warped by a sudden yawn. It’s vague and could be an answer to either question or both but that’s all he says about anything until morning.

*

Adam is still pretty unclear on what Thomas’ job at the diner actually is. He helps out the best he can though mostly that means he mans the counter and shouts out orders or refills the straw dispenser. A lot of the time, he takes orders from customers and does inventory, or peruses the menu so he could suggest new spins on old recipes. There’s only so much they can do with bacon and eggs. Thomas wants the fancy stuff, the French stuff, but this is Jersey and people just want to eat and clog their arteries with cholesterol and not have to think about how long they have to live. 

Thomas has other ideas. So many in fact that one morning Adam finds him in the kitchen, an hour before opening, his sleeves rolled up to his elbow and his hands covered in flour. There’s some of it too on his apron and shirt, streaked across his cheekbones like paint, and he’s crouched down in front of the oven Adam didn’t even know they had, tweaking knobs every now and then, his face lit with expectation. It looks like he’s been here a while: the counter is littered with baking paraphernalia, grease pans and mixing bowls and several apples peeled to the husk.

“What is all this?” Adam asks, throwing his backpack onto the counter. He sticks his finger into the mixing bowl despite Thomas’ shriek of complaint. Batter drips down to his knuckles and he licks it all up, much to Thomas’ annoyance who makes a face at him. 

“You’re disgusting,” Thomas tells him, hugging the bowl protectively. But he says it without any real heat as he moves the bowl out of reach as if that would somehow deter Adam from having another go.

Adam shrugs. Then it hits him: the apples, the breadcrumbs, the heavy scent of cinnamon weighing down the air. “You’re making pie?”

Now it’s Thomas’ turn to shrug. “I find it strange that it’s on the menu at all and we never have them.”

“Yeah, well.” Adam scratches his chin, scraping at the fuzzy beginnings of a stubble. “Someone complained about a stomachache a few years ago and the diner stopped serving them. I guess over time Big Ben kind of forgot. He’s been working here longer than me. I’ve never seen him bake.” Much less operate the oven. Adam can’t even remember cleaning it and he’s cleaned everything in this goddamn diner including the toilets.

“Pity,” Thomas says. “Well, I think we should bring it back.”

“ _No_ ,” Adam says. “We don’t fuck with tradition.”

“But Pie _is_ tradition! You’re American; you should know that.”

“Yeah, well.” Adam rolls his eyes. He supposes Thomas has a point. He’d found it a little weird at first they didn’t sell pies when it was often the thing people asked for after the breakfast special and sometimes the McGregor Milkshake which is really just half a cow and a lot of refined sugar. “Fine, whatever. Let’s have pie back on the menu. Do what you want.”

“ _Yes_ ,” Thomas grits his teeth. “I think I will!”

“Okay!” Adam all but yells. “All right! Jesus.”

Thomas stares at him before placing the bowl back on the counter. The oven hums quietly and an awkward silence descends them, which is normal nowadays because Adam often never knows what to say around Thomas most of the time; he just kind of stops talking and lets the pause drag long enough until one of them can’t stand it and interrupts each other with an inane comment, usually Thomas.

“I need to tidy up,” Thomas sighs, kicking weakly at an apple core that has rolled against his shoe. He ambles to the storage room, making such a loud racket that Adam actually scrambles after him in concern. Turns out it’s nothing: Thomas has just dropped a few cleaning supplies from where they’d been sitting on the shelf. Adam doesn’t even know how he’s managed to do that — the mops are leaning several feet away on the opposite side of the wall. Also, he caught his foot in a bucket which Adam considers a feat as it’s the first time that’s ever happened to anyone he knows. 

Adam shakes his head, then sighs as if the mere act of squatting down to the floor to help Thomas’ foot out of the bucket pains him greatly. 

Thomas huffs but allows Adam to touch his ankle. It’s soft and thin in his hands and he doesn’t know why this is so surprising when he’d already seen the pale inside of Thomas’ wrists. Thomas inverts and everts his foot experimentally. 

“You should be careful in here,” Adam warns him, glancing up at Thomas meaningfully after he sets the nefarious bucket aside. “You might lock yourself in again. We don’t want a repeat of last time, do we.”

“What?” Thomas says. He actually sounds alarmed that Adam regrets saying it altogether even if he’d only meant to tease him. He waves Thomas off then climbs back to his feet, grabbing one of the mops and handing Thomas a clean enough dish rag.

“Let’s get the kitchen clean before Big Ben has both our heads, hm?” Adam suggests. “And by heads I don’t mean the ones on our shoulders.”

Thomas, despite looking faintly ill at the prospect, marches dutifully after him to the kitchen.

Adam forgets about the Pie Incident until later that evening when he’s about to clock out. Weekdays are often busy, and Irene had called in sick so he’s had to both wait on people _and_ bus tables. It’s a thankless task, but at least Thomas is around to help with some of the work, serving meals straight from the kitchen while wearing both an apron and a hairnet. He never complains. Except when Adam forgets to wear his hairnet which is half of the time though it’s really not his fault he forgets where he leaves it lying around. He’s learned to tune Thomas out though, and they build a rhythm together that’s almost soothing in short stretches. Thomas yells a lot, and Adam bangs pots and pans in the kitchen in protest. He scowls at customers; Thomas thwacks him on the arm with a menu card once or twice. It works; it’s perfect. 

Adam is about to fuck off out of there when Thomas accosts him in the parking lot. The bell at the door jangles behind Adam and it’s the only reason he deigns to glance over his shoulder at all, already unhooking his bike where he has it chained next to Big Ben’s ratty old Mazda. 

“Hey,” Adam says. He squints up at Thomas standing haloed by the lamp light. His hair sort of glows in the dark. He’s holding something in his cupped palms, like an offering. Adam gets off his knees, brushing grime off them, and sees that it’s a slice of pie covered tightly in saran wrap, heavy chunks of filling bleeding from the sides of the slice. He accepts it wordlessly, not sure if he should stuff it inside his jacket pocket or his backpack or just keep holding it like an idiot. He settles for the latter. He can’t move anyway, not with Thomas looking so earnest, his eyes practically glittering under the headlights of passing cars driving down the street, lighting the both of them up in intermittent flashes. 

“I love pie,” Thomas says, apropos of nothing.

“Sure,” Adam says without really thinking. “Me too.”

“Pork pie and lemon meringue and chicken and leek. Pies with fruit in them, cherry pie, rhubarb pie…” Thomas shivers a little. He sure loves pie, Adam thinks. “But I’m allergic to blueberries, so.”

“Right.” Adam nods. “That’s a lot of pie.” And then: “Sorry about the allergies.”

Thomas slides his hands inside his pockets, bouncing a little on the balls of his feet. “My mum used to bake a lot when I was little. Do you know what she used to say to me about pie?” Somehow Adam has a feeling Thomas will barrel on anyway regardless of his answer so he lets him talk his fill. “Candy might be sweet, but it's a traveling carnival blowing through town. Pie Is home. And people always come home.” He claps his hands together, the sound so jarring in the silence that had ensued that Adam almost jumps back in surprise 

“So: we’re bringing it back on the menu. I’d already asked my aunt and she’d said yes.”

Adam finds himself smiling in spite of himself. “Do you always get what you want?”

Thomas looks thrown off by the question but answers smoothly. “Sometimes,” he says. He tilts his head. “Why’d you ask?”

“Lucky you,” Adam snorts, then clambers onto his bike. He slides his backpack over his chest. “Thanks for the pie.” Then he lifts the pie slice in a little salute.

Thomas nods at him before stepping away, giving Adam enough berth to maneuver his bike around. 

“Tell me what you think about it,” Thomas says as an afterthought. He lifts his hand in a wave and Adam hesitates, glancing over his shoulder at him before waving back. He looks small, surrounded by all these empty cars, all alone by himself. He’s nearly Adam’s height. But. 

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” Thomas calls out to him, breaking Adam out of his daze.

“Sure,” Adam says. He realizes he still has his hairnet on so he shoves it out of the way and stuffs it where he’s dumped the pie: in the front pocket of his backpack into abyss of paper matter and baggies of weed. “See you,” he adds belatedly, then he’s gone.

Adam demolishes the pie before he gets home, stuffing his mouth at the first red light. He gets crumbs all over himself and almost chokes a few times on the crust, eating the slice by hand, clutching the saran wrap so he doesn’t get his fingers dirty. Before long, his breath reeks of cinnamon. When he glances down at his shirt at the last red light, there are pieces of pie crust and bits of fruit studding his chest like debris. He brings a misshapen piece of apple to his lips, swallows. 

Just then the traffic light hanging overhead turns green to a mostly empty street. 

The pie is all Adam can think about on his way home and he thinks he can smell it on himself even in the shower, in his palms where he held the slice, under his fingernails where he can still see flecks of crust caulked in the nail beds. His shirt carries the scent of cinnamon and apples too. He maybe dreams of pie that night and it would be horrifying if it didn’t taste so good even in dreams.

*

Business is winding down for the night as families finish their dinners and couples top off their desserts. Adam gives the jukebox one final kick and it judders back to life before sputtering out again. He wants to shake it like a malfunctioning toy but he’d already tried that before. And still: nothing. By some stroke of luck he got the jukebox working this morning but it either protested his steady rotation of _The Hollies_ and _The Turtles_ or the entire thing really needed to be replaced.

Outside on the sidewalk, Thomas is still handing out fliers, stuffed in that weird costume in the shape of a pie slice, his big idea. He’s been in and out of it since this morning, his attempt to rack up more sales and sell more pies. So far that only succeeded in scaring off a few children which Adam really isn’t complaining about. He hates kids. But Thomas’ little pie jingle to the tune of _Mary Had A Little Lamb_ is more than a little terrifying.

The loud tinkling of the chimes at the door announces Thomas’ disgruntled presence and Adam looks up from where he’s leaning his elbows against the countertop to marvel at how silly he looks, with his face sticking out of a hole in the pie, all flushed and red and sweating. The front of his hair is sticking up everywhere. He’s an absolute fucking vision.

Thomas sets the fliers down. There are only a few people in the diner, scattered across the back booths, some of them getting ready to head home. 

“I don’t know why I’m not getting through to people,” Thomas sighs. He tries sitting next to Adam at the counter but the costume hinders all movement so he ends up just standing again, hands on his hips. 

Adam tries hard not to smile, or laugh at the hilarious picture he makes: a sad little pie slice with a British accent. In the end, he snorts out a half-laugh, shaking his head at the ridiculousness of it all. “Do you really want me to answer that question?” he says. 

Thomas stares at him blankly. Probably not. 

“Come on, let’s get you out of that thing. You look fucking crazy and you’re driving away customers.” Adam steers Thomas by the elbow, or what he assumes is his elbow anyway and leads him to the back room which is supposed to be an employee break room of some sort but is really just a tiny closet repurposed for that very function, housing a small work bench and lockers covering one side of the wall. There’s a foldable table no one really uses, a couple of hard plastic chairs Paulo had donated from home and a rattling ceiling fan circling stale humid air. As far as employee break rooms go, it’s pretty much a hovel. Adam has seen drug dens with better conditions than this.

“I’ll need a little help with the, er…” Thomas trails off, looking at Adam expectantly. He’s bent at the waist because the top of his costume keeps rubbing up the ceiling or getting caught in the wiring. He’d entered the door sideways. It was really a sight to behold. 

There’s hardly any room for Adam to walk around because the entire room is already cramped but by some miracle he’s able to squeeze himself behind Thomas and locate the zipper at the back buried under all that padding. He breathes a sigh of relief almost at the same time as Thomas. Thomas, who steps out of the costume, peeling the arms off first, while Adam tries not to watch on account of how grotesque it looks, seeing him squirm free from the confines of a padded pie like he’s being conceived in a surrealist nightmare.

The thing that gets Adam most of all is the fact that when Thomas finally steps out of the thing, he’s actually wearing a unitard. _A black unitard._

“ _What_ ,” Adam says, wondering if this is part of a dream.

“What?” Thomas repeats, totally clueless because of course he would be. Adam has been making excuses for his behavior, chalking off his quirks to simple British charm, but this is just crossing the line. Thomas is wearing unitards and they hug the shape of his skinny-bird calves. When he stands, turning away from Adam to dig through the contents of his locker, Adam is afforded the view of his ass: round and small which should have somehow been obvious, and soft, which is what Adam finds most weirdly surprising.Then again it’s not as if he spends his time ogling Thomas’ ass. He wondersthough if Thomas’ ass fits in his hand.

Adam shakes off the thought as well as the many others that vie for attention. And then Thomas starts taking his unitard off, and then they come crashing back in haphazard order.

Thomas takes the top part of the unitard off first, easing his arms free, his back to Adam. He has freckles here and there spread across his narrow shoulders and his body is pale like the belly of a fish. Thomas turns, then, finally pulling a t-shirt over his head, his forearms buried in the fabric and looking like a headlesschicken, struggling to conquer the mystery of armholes.

It takes Adam a beat or two to spring into action and tug the hem down for him. Thomas blinks at him in response, his hair mussed up. Adam holds his stare. Then Thomas smooths his shirt down the rest of the way but not before Adam glimpses a sliver of skin — a belly button, which really shouldn’t be a big deal and _isn’t_. 

Still, a brief current of _something_ runs through Adam like a slow wave washing up on a shore. Then Thomas starts hopping around from foot to foot trying to kick off the bottom part of his unitard, and then it’s gone just like that.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Adam has no social graces. This is mostly true and strengthened by the fact he often puts his foot in his mouth, not because he’s prone to provoke people purely for shock value, only because he constantly answers to gut instinct. He’ll call an asshole an asshole; easy as that. Often this kind of behavior lands him in trouble, getting him into petty fights whether at school or elsewhere. Now that he’s in his last year of high school, he’s gotten better at picking his battles, knowing which ones are worth a few bruises and which ones he can simply let go of. That isn’t the case for Kenneth Moore though who shows up one day at the diner demanding Adam give him back his money. Money Adam doesn’t owe him or anyone else because Kenneth Fucking Moore scammed him the last time Adam dealt with him. The weed had been the bad kind. A lot of people complained to him about headaches and demanded a refund like Adam was working fucking retail.

“You got my money, thief?” Kenneth hisses, accosting Adam during his smoke break like a school yard bully even though he’s thirty-five years old and has no right to be hanging around high school kids anymore. Adam is eighteen, but still, he’s technically just a kid. Also he’s getting tired of being called a thief because frankly, it’s getting old. He’s not a thief. He’s an opportunist. There’s a difference. 

“I’ve been calling you,” Kenneth continues in a tone that’s meant to rile Adam up but only succeeds in making him tamp down an unexpected laugh.

Adam sighs and re-grips his book. It’s a new one. _Tolkien_. He started reading it at Thomas’ recommendation as he had apparently read it in school. The names still confuse the shit out of him though and he still doesn’t understand what all the fuss is about surrounding this ring. Adam glances up at Kenneth. He doesn’t look too happy, but then again when is he ever. 

“I don’t have a phone,” Adam tells him baldly. 

Obviously this is the wrong thing to say because a muscle in Kenneth’s jaw clenches visibly. Really, he looks like an overripe tomato. “You think you’re funny? You think this is a joke?”

The problem with Kenneth is that despite his size he’s irritatingly fast on his feet. Adam barely has the time to look up before getting punched in the face. His swing comes at a weird angle that offsets Adam’s center off balance then next comes the secondary hit that tips him over to one side. Usually, Adam is able to give as good as he gets but tonight he’s worked double shifts and has just taken a couple shots of gin to ease the transition of one shift sliding over to the next. 

The alcohol has worked its magic, slowing his reaction time, so that when he straightens up and comes at Kenneth, he isn’t fast enough and Kenneth manages to jab his nose with an upward swipe of his arm. This knocks him back flat on his ass and his palms grip the ground with a rough scrape. He can feel his nose running, wet with blood, but it’s actually only him nicking his bottom lip. His nose is still in tact. _Thank god_ , he thinks with a kind of manic relief.

When Adam tries heaving himself up, he’s still a little dizzy, shambling from foot to foot as he aims a sloppy hit at Kenneth’s face. His fist makes contact a couple of times but he’s wholly unprepared for Kenneth fucking headbutting him out of nowhere. 

“What the fuck!”

Kenneth’s about to slam his fist in Adam’s face again when Adam hears someone yelling over Kenneth’s shoulder. Muggily, Adam thinks he’s simply hearing things but then there’s a sharp cry behind Kenneth again and suddenly Thomas is coming at Kenneth with the handle of a mop. Thomas knocks Kenneth back on his ass, then delivers an actual bare-knuckled punch to his face, his fist connecting with a satisfying crunch that makes Kenneth stagger. 

Adam watches all of this with a kind of wry detachment brought about by the flaring pain currently holding his face hostage. Thomas is several weight classes below Kenneth but he’s vicious and has a mean left hook.

“Bugger off!” Thomas yells like Kenneth was just some pesky rat he’d found trespassing in his garden and wasn’t just beating the shit out of Adam a few moments ago. 

Kenneth scrambles off obediently, tail between his legs, probably cowed by the threatening angle in which Thomas is currently brandishing his mop. He’d always been more talk, less walk. _Jesus_. What a fucking day. Adam shakes his head. This turns out to be a bad idea because a wave of nausea spirals right through him, threatening to drag him down toward some sort of dark abyss. 

“Uh,” he says eloquently. He thinks he may have a concussion. “How the fuck did you just do that?” he asks Thomas who’s red-faced and panting and scowling down at him now like this is all somehow his fault, like Adam often invited people to drive their fist in his face during his smoke break as a way to get out of work. 

A lock of Thomas’ hair has escaped its neat little coif and now slants over Thomas’ left eyebrow. Thomas tries blowing it back into place discreetly but Adam notices and it doesn’t work. Otherwise he looks like he always does: unruffled and pristine, though there’s an annoyed little twitch to the tip of his nose and a fleck of blood on his nice blue button up shirt. 

“Learned everything I know in boarding school,” Thomas says, curling and uncurling his hand at his side. The knuckles drip with blood and Adam realizes belatedly that it’s mostly Kenneth’s blood, not Thomas’. He wonders what else Thomas knows how to do. 

“Boarding school is a lot like prison only people are meaner,” Thomas explains, as if hearing Adam’s thoughts. Or maybe Adam had voiced them out loud. “I got bullied all the time. Then I got tired of being bullied.” He shrugs one shoulder, before crouching down and squinting into Adam’s face. Adam didn’t even know he was on the ground or how he’d ended up there but it makes sense now, in retrospect, that he’s looking up at Thomas who’s peering down at him with those unreadable eyes. 

“Adam,” Thomas says. His hand is cool on Adam’s face. “You absolute fucking prick”

Adam laughs, feeling crazy, then the world turns suddenly black. 

*

It comes as a surprise to no one that it’s a concussion. Adam is discharged within a few hours and Paulo drops him off at the diner solely because Adam had begged him to as he didn’t want to come home looking like shit. It wouldn’t be the first time but he didn’t want to worry his gramma after he’d promised her he’d stay out of trouble. 

Meanwhile, his head is killing him. He’d seen himself in the rearview mirror during the drive to the hospital: one side of his face has swollen up like bad fruit. Not very pretty. He has an enormous black eye and a cut on his lip still stinging with antiseptic and all he wants to do is watch embarrassing TV like Wheel of Fortune and sleep for a week straight.

As it stands, Thomas has appointed himself as his watcher so that whenever Adam starts to nod off, he punches him really hard on the shoulder and jars him back awake. For a little guy, he packs a mean punch. 

“What the fuck!” Adam hisses, but his mouth is full of saliva and his words come out garbled.

Thomas punches him again, softly this time. “Stay awake. We’re almost there.”

Paulo tuts at them from the driver’s seat, reminding them to play nice.

Adam closes his eyes. He doesn’t know how much time passes but when he opens them again, they’re back at the diner and he has to blink several times to make sense of the rest of his surroundings. Distantly, he hears Paulo and Thomas talking in low voices, with Thomas pointing and gesticulating wildly while Paulo scratches his head and shrugs every five minutes. Finally, the debate ends and Paulo throws his head back and spreads his arms, whatever that means. Then he laughs, a loud donkey bray.

“Right,” Thomas says, at full volume, emerging from the other side of the car door which he’s holding open. He thrusts a hand at Adam and it seems like the right thing to do to take it, so Adam takes it and pulls himself out on the sidewalkwhere gravity imposes a bit of a challenge. He can’t even blink his eyes simultaneously. He keeps listing to one side. _Shit_. This is gonna be great. 

“Thomas,” he mumbles. “Thomas, Thomas, Thomas.” 

Something smells like cherries. It’s Thomas’ hair. Adam buries his face in the smell, never wanting it to end. _Cherries_ , he thinks, and is immediately elbowed in the stomach when he breathes in deep. 

“ _Ow_ ,” he groans.

“I’m right here, you lunatic,” Thomas snorts, and there he is, in fact, his arm around Adam’s waist, his presence solid against Adam’s side as he lugs him back to the warm interior of the diner, one wobbly step at a time because Adam is a lot heavier than him and dragging his weight. Thomas turns to wave at Paulo who waves back before driving off.

Thomas keeps only a few of the lights on, a small mercy considering Adam is having trouble with his eyes. He deposits Adam in one of the booths, and a glass of iced water makes an appearance at the table as well as a plate of salted peanuts. Somehow a canvas tarp smelling like flour doubles as a blanket. Adam holds it against his chest all the while trying to scoot sideways into the booth. But he’s too tall, too big, and his legs dangle off the edge uncomfortably. He stares off into space, not really doing anything, or thinking, just immersing himself in the comforting sound of Thomas moving about the place. The tarp smells like flour. It’s a little itchy but it’ll do.

“Okay,” he says, to nothing in particular. “All right.”

There’s a crackle and a hiss, and suddenly there’s music playing, issued by the jukebox Thomas has somehow managed to get working. Adam recognizes Billie Holiday twenty minutes after the song has started playing, and then wipes a glob of spit dribbling down his chin against the back of his arm. At least he hasn’t vomited yet, or done anything embarrassing. He eyes the glass of water on the table and spills about half of it all over his shirt in a poor attempt to take a tiny sip.

“Shit,” he says and rests his head against the window. The glass is cold under his cheek. Maybe, maybe if he just closed his eyes a little bit…

“Oi,” Thomas warns, smacking him on the knee with a rolled up newspaper. “None of that now. Open your eyes.”

Adam opens his eyes. Thomas is looming over him, his hands on his hips, looking at him the way someone would look at a dog that misbehaved. 

“I’m fine,” Adam slurs. “It’s not a big deal. I just have a bump on my head. I can sleep it off and I’ll be fine.”

“Well, I’d rather you didn’t slip into a coma,” Thomas says loftily, though he actually does sound concerned. “Sackler, don’t be stubborn. Please.”

“The doctor said I was fine, and I’m _fine_ ,” Adam assures him, which is a complete and utter lie because he can’t even remember what the doctor had looked like, whether it had been a man or a woman or short or tall; all he remembers about the experience is a series of harsh hallway lights, some strange hospital noises, and a soothing voice in his ear asking what his bloody middle name was because they’ll need it for the forms, with the voice sounding suspiciously like Thomas’, accented.

Adam glances up drowsily when Thomas slides into the seat across the table. The sign on the door has been flipped to CLOSED. It should be eerie, with all the lights off including the ones in the kitchen, save for the lone pendant lamp jutting from the ceiling above them, but Adam doesn’t mind. It’s peaceful, with nobody else around like this. The jukebox hums softly in the background, an unobtrusive wash of white noise that’s easy to tune out. Outside, the parking lot is dark with the blue black haze of midnight, but all the street lamps are on, throwing spots of light on the pavement. A car ambles past on the street.

Thomas doesn’t really have to be here. Adam’s sure Thomas has other things to do besides babysit him and watch him drool on himself and he says as much. 

In response, Thomas looks at him with mild confusion. “I hope you know that none of that made a lick of sense,” he sighs. Then he pushes a plate towards Adam, and it’s a slice of pie, a perfect triangle. It smells good and heavenly, like cherries. Like Thomas’ hair. 

Adam thinks of Thomas’ hair and then buries his face into his arms and says, “ _Ugh_.”

“My mom’s gonna kill me when I get home,” Adam sniffs once he feels well enough to string sentences together and not sound like he’s speaking under water.

“She would be well within her rights to,” Thomas says matter-of-factly. He twirls a fork in mid-air, the tines full of crumbly pie. He probably baked the pie himself. He’s been in a baking frenzy lately after people have started asking for recipes. The pies are actually quite delicious. Adam has brought a few of them home with him, leftovers from that day’s menu. Thomas only serves fresh pie. When Adam leaves them sitting in the fridge, by morning his sister will have eaten all of them. 

“Here, have some,” Thomas suggests when Adam’s head starts to droop again. He touches Adam’s arm, short of pinching the skin to get his attention. “It has cherries in it, come on now. Your favourite.”

“They’re not my favourite,” Adam points out.

“I know,” Thomas says with a wry smile, shameless about the fact as he licks the tine clean. “They’re mine.”

Sauce drips from the corners of his lips, staining his mouth a shiny red like lipgloss. Adam reaches over, across the table, to wipe it away with his thumb, but his depth perception is off so his knuckles graze Thomas’ forehead instead. 

Thomas sighs under his hand, voice muffled. His breath is warm against Adam’s wrist. “Sackler, please stop touching my face.”

To keep him from falling asleep, Thomas starts playing all of Adam’s jukebox favorites which really is just an eclectic mix of classic rock and blues. Every now and then Thomas lets slip a song of his choice, a selection that leans more towards bluegrass and jazz. They hum along, off-key. Thomas’ awful singing keeps Adam at least partially wake. Adam lobs a peanut at him when Thomas starts attempting to hit the high notes.

When that gets boring, Thomas volunteers to read to him, rummaging through Adam’s backpack where he keeps his battered copy of _The Hobbit_ dog-eared beyond salvaging. Half of the pages are streaked with blood and grime from the earlier fracas but otherwise the rest of the book is still in tact, with only a flattened up paper crane marking his progress.

Thomas places it on the table next to the half-eaten plate of pie and bowl of peanuts. Then he asks, calmly,“Do you carry a lot of weed all the time?”

“What?”

Thomas looks at him like it’s a staring contest on who can get the other one to blink first. “Who was that man?” Thomas prompts.

Adam doesn’t feel comfortable by this line of questioning so he simply closes his eyes as a means of deflection. “Just some guy I know,” he sighs. “He’s no one. Trust me.”

Thomas doesn’t say anything. Finally, Adam hears him moving around again, getting up, leaving the booth. He squints one eye open and sees Thomas setting the bowl and plate down on the counter. Watching his back move has been Adam’s favorite past time lately; he wonders when that’s happened. 

“How’s your head?” Thomas asks once he turns to face Adam again. 

“How’s your hand?” Adam asks. 

Thomas flexes his fist. He’s too far away for Adam to see if there’s any bruising, but he still remembers how Thomas had punched Kenneth in the face. _Twice_. He catches Thomas stretching out his fingers, shaking his hand out in quick movements before pocketing it when he sees Adam watching him. 

“You should’ve let him kick the shit out of me,” Adam says, “I could’ve handled it myself.”

Thomas tilts his head to one side. “He would have killed you, you know. You would have died, you prick.” He says it without any venom, completely straight-faced. 

“He’s a fucking coward,” Adam smiles, huffing out a laugh that whistles through his teeth. “And I’m made of sturdier stuff. I mean, look at me.”

“Right,” Thomas says, looking skeptical. “Well.” He picks up the book again, idly flipping through it, running his thumb over the paper crane when it slips from the pages. He doesn’t read from the book, much to Adam’s surprise, just starts talking and talking unprompted like he’s drunk and can’t help himself. He tells Adam about boarding school, where he read Latin and played rugby and learned how to defend himself from bigger kids by being faster than them and teaching himself not to cry when the hits land, all the while polishing his diction. He’s Scottish on his father’s side, he’s allergic to blueberries which Adam already knows, and his favorite play is Hamlet. He hates when people are late because it points to a deeper character flaw. His dad is always late to things. Sometimes Thomas hates him. 

Then Thomas tells him about his house, the one in London, which will become his dad’s after his mom moves out before the end of the month, small and cozy with warm rugs on the hardwood floors and plants fringing the windowsill, cornflower blue tiling on the kitchen walls. The one with windows like eyes that look out into a view of the street. One side of his bedroom wall is covered with an enormous map, the places he longs to visit marked by colored push pins, red for cities he’s already been. 

It sounds nice.

Before long, Adam is asleep. But he doesn’t dream.

*

Thomas invites Adam to his aunt and uncle’s barbecue. 

Adam thinks about not going, until he remembers he doesn’t have a legitimate excuse not to and just shows up late after half an hour of hemming and hawing. He wears a clean shirt, puts on some semi-clean jeans, and bikes to the McGregors’ house which he finds entirely through trial and error. Thomas had given him their address earlier in the week but at the time he had only been half-listening, in the midst of replacing a light bulb in the kitchen with a screwdriver clenched between his teeth while he tried not to topple from the middle rung of a ten foot stepladder. 

The McGregors live in an affluent part of town, not that Adam lived in the slums, but the disparity is still evident. Their house is modest by this neighborhood standards, two-stories tall and nestled at the very lip of the street with a long sloping driveway and beige stucco walls. 

Adam rings the doorbell. It takes approximately five minutes before Mrs McGregor answers the door. She’s old, older than Adam’s mom and almost closer to age to this gramma but still beautiful in that carefully tended way people with money were. But she was nice to him and kind so Adam didn’t think anything mean of her because it would have been so wrong. She gave him a job when he had no work experience. Her husband was a different story though. He was kind of an asshole most of the time whenever he came by the diner.

“Hi,” Adam says. 

“Adam!” Mrs McGregor pushes the door open the rest of the way. “Thomas said we were expecting you. I’m so glad he’s making friends. It’s hard for him sometimes, you know. Come in, come in. You can leave your bike in the driveway, it’ll be safe there.”

Adam lets her lead him through the rest of the house. The hallway carpet is a plush green and there are paintings on the wall, ornate vases on the mantel. The lighting fixtures look expensive. There’s a small piano sitting in the corner of the living room, the top crowded with framed photographs of what looked like family though Adam knows for a fact the McGregors never had any children.

Mrs McGregor shows him into the yard already full of people milling about clutching a hotdog in one hand and a plastic cup in the other. No one Adam knows because they seem to be mostly little kids, the McGregors’ nephews and nieces or else the spawns of the people they’ve invited. They’re mostly running around and keeping to themselves while the adults get drunk in their own little corner and surround the grill. 

Adam scans the crowd, looking for Thomas. He doesn’t find him until half an hour later, sitting under the shade by the pool, squinting into the water with a soggy paper plate in his lap. He’s wearing cargo shorts and a painfully orange t-shirt with a collar and his legs are brightly pale under the sun. He’s missing a flipflop. He doesn’t seem to be aware of Adam’s presence at all so Adam clears his throat a few times to announce it. 

“Hey,” Adam says.

Thomas turns his head toward him. He’s still squinting. It’s the sun; it’s so fucking bright, bouncing off the chlorinated water and making everything look like an Afremov painting. “Hi,” Thomas says, and blinks.

Adam points to Thomas’ foot which he realizes he’s never seen naked before. He doesn’t know why this image is so striking: a foot which should be entirely innocuous, even mundane, but the sight of it sends a frisson of _something_ barreling through him, as easily negligible as all the other _somethings_ that came before except this time, this time it’s slow to crest. 

“What happened to the other—” Adam asks, letting his sentence trail off. He’s been doing that a lot lately, he noticed, especially around Thomas. 

Thomas blinks again, shaking himself out of his daze. He points to the water, and sure enough, there it is floating in the middle of the pool like a sailboat: his flipflop. Adam opens his mouth to laugh but then glances at Thomas whose face is pinched in an annoyed little moue. He won’t even ask how it got there. Knowing Thomas, it must involve some weird overly long story.

“I’ll get it for you.”

“What?”

Adam starts taking his shirt off.

“Why are you taking your shirt off? There are children here!” Thomas’ panic makes his voice rise several octaves.

Adam twists his arms out of his shirt and ignores him. “I’m not gonna give you a fucking lap dance calm down,” he says, tugging himself free by the shirt’s back hem. “I just don’t want to get my clothes all wet, all right?” He unbuckles his belt. Thomas is turning red, then redder by the second, refusing to look him in the eye at all as if Adam is embarrassing himself by folding his jeans and dumping them on the grass.

When Adam is down to his boxers, he wades into the pool, grabbing Thomas’ errant flipflop though not after circling a few laps to cool himself down and spit out a leaf. He holds the flipflop triumphantly in the air, swimming back to Thomas’ side of the pool before pushing himself up onto the deck where he dries himself off like a dog, shaking droplets of water from his hair which he should really get trimmed. 

Thomas makes a disgusted face at him but it warps into a look of surprise when Adam kneels beside him by the deck chair. Adam wraps his hand around Thomas’ heel which is pale and soft and guides the rest of the flipflop on carefully. It fits as it should but Adam waits a beat before letting Thomas’ foot go. Afterwards, he leans back on his palms. He can feel where beads of sweat and water are drying on his skin, coming to pool around his navel, doesn’t know why he’s suddenly breathing hard. 

Just then, a kid in a cowboy hat runs past them, shrieking his head off. They watch him go. 

“Thanks,” Thomas says after a moment, still keeping his gaze at a fixed point elsewhere. “You didn’t have to though.” He wiggles his toes. Adam watches that too. Then he shrugs. He knows he didn’t have to; he’s not sure what came over him. He’s not sure what comes over him these days to be honest. It’s been a weird few weeks. 

“You’re all wet,” Thomas says to him. 

“Well, yeah,” Adam agrees. He raises his eyebrows.

Thomas sets his paper plate down on the deck chair and slides his hands inside his pockets when he stands to his full height. Then he turns and starts walking away, glancing over his shoulder at Adam when he doesn’t follow. “Well,” he says expectantly. “What are you still doing there? Come along now and we’ll get you a towel.”

Adam grabs his clothes from the ground and follows.

*

Thomas is staying in the guest room. It’s not much, just a few personal effects like the burgundy coat hanging from a hook behind the door, and the leather watch Adam has seen him wear a few times sitting on the nightstand next to an untouched glass of water. He has a mouthguard kept in a clear plastic container by the bed — Caroline used to wear one because she’d grind her teeth in her sleep — and next to it a pair of reading glasses carefully folded on top of a worn copy of _Howards End._

Adam tries to imagine him in glasses, wearing a mouthguard. The thought should make him laugh but instead makes his chest clench in some inexplicable way.

Thomas steps out of the walk-in closet with a towel in hand which he throws at Adam and Adam catches in the face. He’d been careful not to get water all over the carpet but Thomas had insisted it was fine. Now he has no idea where to sit while his boxers drip all over everything. Adam rubs his hair dry with the towel until it stands in static tufts around his head, running the towel across his chest and then the back of his arms, all the while aware Thomas is watching him. Not doing much else, that Adam can tell in his periphery, just sort of standing there with clenched fists.

Thomas sits on the bed. Adam, without knowing why, walks over to him. He glances behind Thomas, sees the row of vinyl records leaning against a shelf by the windowsill, probably brought from home on account of how very few they are to be an actual collection, or maybe it’s the meager beginnings of one. 

Thomas follows his line of sight, humming thoughtfully. “Oh, those are just some of my favorite,” he explains. “Couldn’t bring them all over. My dad — he’s. He’s selling some of them. For money. Not that I mind of course, I mean. I don’t know what I’m saying. I’ll shut up now.”

Adam doesn’t respond as he flips through Thomas’ records: Billie Holiday, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Jimmy Hamilton. He puts them back down and shrugs. Outside, he can see more guests arriving. More kids. He turns his gaze back to Thomas who’s sitting on the corner of the bed with his back turned to him now, rubbing his left elbow with his thumb, back and forth, back and forth. He really should change out of that shirt. It’s terrible, an eyesore. Who wears that shade of orange anyway, it completely washes him out. Adam wonders how Thomas has even made any friends then he remembers himself and wants to laugh.

“Thomas,” Adam says, and something about the way his voice cuts the stillness has the both of them startled.

“I need to change out of uh, my…” Adam doesn’t have to finish that sentence before Thomas is nodding along, shooting out of the bed as if he’d been jumpstarted. 

“Yes, of course,” Thomas says then shows Adam where the bathroom is. Inside, Adam shimmies out of his boxers, yanking his jeans on uncomfortably, before tugging on his shirt. He’ll feel weird all day, he knows, but it’s just some minor discomfort until he gets home. Then he remembers he has to bike all the way home and knocks his head against the tiled wall. Shit. Great. He pokes his head out the door. 

Thomas is peering out the window. Adam waits for him to turn but until then stares and stares, at his silhouette softened by the afternoon light that’s filling the room with a dream-like haze, at the way his hand rests calmly on the windowsill, the same hand he had used to flick Adam between the eyes when he’d threatened to fall asleep with a concussion, the same hand that punched Kenneth Moore in the fucking mouth. 

“I think I’ll need to use your dryer,” Adam states out loud, breaking the silence once again. He feels embarrassed without knowing why. 

Thomas nods, giving him one of those looks, and just like that everything is back to normal again. 

“Come on,” Thomas says, and leads him back downstairs, drawing him from this room with the bed with the dark covers and the coat hanging behind the door, away from this strange precipice that Adam keeps finding himself perched on top of each time with no choice but to jump.

*

Two days later, Adam hears a tap on his bedroom window at four in the morning. He thinks he’s dreaming and elects to ignore it until he hears it again, then again. He sits up in bed, still half-asleep, convinced he’s actually hearing things. This usually happens when he goes to sleep drunk. Except this time he didn’t drink before going to bed and he’s clear-headed as can be even with his eyes half-open to slits. And then there it is again. _Tap_. A beat. And then: _tap_.

It’s dark still and the only light in the room is coming from the streetlamp outside. Adam is familiar enough with the layout of his bedroom to walk through it in the dark and he shambles over to the source of the noise and barely misses the pebble that whizzes past his ear and clatters onto the floor behind him. That jars him completely awake almost at the same time as the familiar voice calling out “sorry!” from the lawn.

Adam peers over the window ledge. There, standing outside is Thomas McGregor who seems to be carrying a handful of pebbles in one hand as if this is somehow a coming-of-age 80’s movie and Adam is about to invite him inside by having him climb in through the window. First off, knowing Thomas, he’s never gonna be able to do that. Secondly, what the hell is he even doing here in the middle of the night.

“Thomas,” Adam sighs. “Don’t do anything weird. I’ll come get you. Just. Go through the front door like a normal person.”

Adam takes the stairs two at a time though he’s still careful not to wake anyone. He turns the light on in the foyer before answering the door. He remembers, belatedly, that he’s in boxers and a ratty tank top, the sleeves cut off with a boxcutter to stave off the heat.

Thomas blinks at him from the front step, looking sheepish. He’s wearing his coat, the one Adam has seen in his room the last time, even though it’s a warm fucking night out.

“It’s the middle of the night. What are you doing in my neighborhood? More importantly, what the hell are you doing at my house?”

“You did say I should go through the door,” Thomas says, sounding totally confused. 

“You know what I mean.”

“Do you have any alcohol?”

Adam gives him a probing look. It takes him a beat but then he says, “You came here for that?”

Without waiting for an answer, Thomas shoulders past him as if he owns the place, rummaging through drawers in the kitchen and peeking into cabinets. Adam is smarter than that though, and hides his gin in places he knows his parents will never find it. They change locations every now and then to evade detection. Currently, it’s in a shoebox shoved underneath the bed amidst carpet dust and stray bits of homework he’s forgotten to turn in in the last few years. 

Thomas slams the fridge shut and whirls around, crossing his arms in disappointment. “Well, this is boring,” he announces. “I thought you’d have alcohol. You seem to be always drunk.”

“Hey,” Adam warns, even though it’s technically true. Still, it knifes straight through him like a blow he isn’t expecting, taking him completely off guard: shame at being caught, disappointment at having Thomas be the one to call him out like that. He thought he was being discreet; he was always careful to keep the drinking under control, just two shots at the most per day if he can help it, just to get that buzz going. It’s never impeded him in any way before.

He wonders if Thomas himself has had something to drink. He usually isn’t this — _reckless_. His face is flushed but that could just be from having to wear that stupid coat in the middle of June. 

“You’re gonna wake the whole house with that racket you’re making,” Adam says. “If you want alcohol—” He rubs at his face tiredly. “I got some in my room. Just be quiet okay?”

“Okay,” Thomas echoes. That seems to chastise him somewhat.

They stumble up the stairs with Thomas running his hand along one side of the wall, pausing each time his hand bumps a framed picture Adam’s mom has hanging. There’s a dozen of them in the hall, most of them taken in a studio, all of them at least ten years old or older. 

Thomas stares at the one of Adam as a little kid with a gap-toothed grin, tilting his head to one side as if to marvel at some masterpiece. Finally, he steps back and almost bumps into Adam. “You had big ears as a child,” he observes.

“I still do,” Adam snorts, glancing at him over his shoulder. He pushes the door open to his room, and it makes a loud creak that he’s worried for a second would wake the entire house more so than their back and forth whispering.

The rest of his room isn’t much to look at. Everything is a mess because he isn’t expecting company. A huge computer monitor sits on a desktop he never uses. Books on the shelf are arranged with no discernible order whatsoever, DVDs and CDs littering the floor in scattered piles while a sweaty t-shirt lies limp on a beanbag pushed under the window. Discarded laundry everywhere. Adam kicks the tube of lubricant out of the way so it rolls under the bed, out of sight.

“Your room smells funny,” Thomas says to him. He doesn’t say that to be mean but Adam still can’t help the wry, “Thank you,” that comes out.

Adam digs the gin out of hiding, wiping the cup that sits on the nightstand on the hem of his shirt but Thomas takes the whole bottle from him and drinks straight from the source. He sputters and spews a little all over his nice burgundy coat. “Ugh,” he says then drinks some more, getting so much gin all over himself that Adam has to intervene by confiscating the bottle and wrenching it from his hands. 

“What’s wrong with you?” Adam hisses. Then he sees the whites of Thomas’ eyes up close: they’re blood shot. “Are you— _oh._ ”

“I think I’m drunk,” Thomas confirms then hiccups. “Shit.” He presses his face in his hands, scrubbing his fingers through his hair. 

Adam wants to ask him whether he thinks it’s a good idea to be drinking still but withholds his comment. Instead, he pushes all his crap off the bed so Thomas can sit on it and not have to encounter anything decidedly gross. He takes a pull of the gin himself, wincing at the burn in his throat before setting it down on the nightstand, watching Thomas struggle out of his coat. He’s wearing a charcoal gray t-shirt underneath, the cotton so worn it’s practically see through.

“Thomas,” Adam sighs. “Thomas. Look at me.”

Thomas is breathing hard. “What.”

“Are you all right?”

Thomas sets his coat aside. His head is tilted so far down his chin is practically pressed to his chest. Adam wonders if he’d dozed and gets his answer when Thomas jerks back up a second later like he’s been electrocuted. His eyes are flushed when he looks at Adam. Adam suspects he’s been crying. 

“My mum,” Thomas begins, and immediately Adam can predict the trajectory of this story. Turns out, Thomas’ mom had been having affair, that it had been going on for years, which was why his dad had decided to leave her after catching her one too many times in the den, none of that ‘irreconcilable differences’ bullshit that Thomas has been hearing the whole time. 

Thomas felt that he could trust no one. Not his mom whom he’d sympathized with for being the one left behind, and not his dad who just didn’t try hard enough so his mom wouldn’t have to look elsewhere for comfort. Not his aunt or uncle whom he’d overheard talking downstairs after dinner, cooing about poor little Thomas who had no idea, no idea at all.

Thomas starts crying, asoft sound, a gentle hitch in the rhythm of his breathing. Adam looks at him awkwardly for a long time before reaching over and patting his hand. He never knows what to say in these types of situations, ill-equipped with the magic words to make people feel better. He wonders if the words even exist. Right now he doesn’t know any, no words to make Thomas feel better or stop crying so he just stares at him and continues feeling like an awful human being. Like a complete asshole, he simply squeezes Thomas’ hand.

When Thomas finishes crying, rubbing frantically at his eyes with his knuckles, he gives Adam a shaky smile and then crawls further up the bed on his hands and knees, wincing when he puts pressure on his right knee. “Ow, owsies.”

“Owsies?” Adam repeats, completely dumbfounded. “What.”

Thomas rolls over onto his back, staring morosely at his knees, leaning his weight on his elbows. There are tear tracks dampening his cheeks andAdam is seized with the crazy urge to wipe them dry with his palms. He’s filled with other urges too though they’re mostly to do with Thomas and wanting to push back the lock of hair that keeps stubbornly curling over his forehead.

“I think I hurt my knee,” Thomas says, meeting Adam’s gaze.

“Doing what, acrobatics?” Adam teases. 

But Thomas is being entirely serious. “I rode a bicycle on the way here. I wasn’t very good at it, I’ve been so out of practice so I er, kept falling over.”

“Are you fucking serious?”

Thomas shrugs. Of course he’s fucking serious. Adam’s never heard him tell a joke before. This is another one of those things well within the realms of his personality. Of course he’d bike all the way here in the middle of the night. Of course he’d do it anyway even if he kept falling over.

“Let me take a look at that knee,” Adam sighs. He’s been sighing all night which only seems par for the course. Thomas wriggles when he slides off his pants, apparently holding no compunctions about getting naked for Adam. He lets out a whimper of pain when the fabric tugs at the skin of his knee. 

Adam rolls his pants down gently after that and sees the crosshatch of red scrapes marring Thomas’ right knee. There’s bruising all over his shins too where he must have hit them on the pavement. At least, Adam reasons, it’s not as bad as he’d thought. 

Thomas slips his feet out the rest of the way before kicking off his shoes. He’s wearing blue flannel boxers and his legs are lean and endless.

Without really thinking about it, Adam touches the edges of his knee with his thumb. “That’s going to leave a scar,” he says. He feels the shiver that eases through Thomas like a landslide but doesn’t look at him. Instead, he goes to the bathroom in the hall to fetch his mom’s first aid kid, wetting the end of a clean enough hand towel after washing both his hands.

When he comes back, Thomas is still on the bed, poking disinterestedly at his knee. He looks up when Adam enters, leaning his weight on his palms. “Hello,” he says. “Welcome back.”

“Thanks,” Adam replies automatically. 

Adam resolutely doesn’t think about how Thomas looks like he belongs on his bed, sitting on top of the covers and smiling faintly up at him with his head tipped to the side, or the fact that his long legs are covered with a film of dark hair.

The bed dips under Adam’s weight when he cradles Thomas’ foot in his lap and starts cleaning the scrape with the damp end of the towel, having no clear idea what to do next except probably pour antiseptic over it like Caroline has done a number of times for him when he’d been younger and stupid.

“I’m not a joke,” Thomas says, his voice so soft Adam almost doesn’t hear it even with the silence that seems to be pressing all around them. “Do you think I’m a joke?” He’s watching Adam closely, like he’s waiting for an answer. 

Thomas shifts a little, then stretches out onto his back, still with his leg folded primly over Adam’s lap. His shirt rides up his ribs at the movement. There’s hair too below his belly button, but it’s so faint that it’s only visible when Adam squints. 

“I’d never think you were a joke,” Adam says. _I mean look at you,_ he thinks, and actually does look at Thomas. He’s beautiful. How can anyone like him be a joke. He doesn’t say this though, mostly because he’s a fucking coward. Instead he lets the statement hang until it stales the air.

“My aunt and uncle think I don’t know that the only reason they let me play ‘manager’ at the diner is because they pity me,” Thomas tells him. 

When Adam glances at him abruptly, he barrels on, “My life is falling apart. I think this gap year is doing me more harm than good and it’s bloody awful.” He hitches out a laugh that sounds suspiciously like a sob. 

Thomas cups his palms over his face, leaving them there for a whole minute. Adam finishes cleaning him up, dabbing his scrapes with antiseptic before sticking a large band aid over his knee. It’s a little crooked but it’ll have to do. It’s not like he’s had any first-aid training. 

Thomas continues to watch him as Adam lays carefully onto his side, making sure none of their parts are touching. It’s a small bed so Adam’s acutely aware of Thomas’ proximity, the soft dents he’s making on the covers whenever he shifts. His hair rubs up against Adam’s pillows and Adam thinks about the smell it’ll leave later when he’s alone and Thomas is not here. Cherries, probably, all over the pillows, all over the bed. He imagines what it’s like to fall asleep in it, what kind of dreams it’ll give him. Then he flicks the lamp on the nightstand off before he does anything they’ll both regret, plunging the room into darkness.

A car rumbles past outside and Adam almost yelps when Thomas puts his head on his chest. It’s such an innocent thing, and he does it with no preamble. Adam’s heart starts rattling in his chest for a while then it slows down when he hears Thomas’ breathing evening out. He glances down, the action bringing him almost nose to nose with Thomas whose face is tilted upwards and whose eyes don’t blink at all, pale and watery in the dark. 

“I like how your room smells,” Thomas whispers. His breath is gin-scented but it’s not all that bad. 

“Like feet?” Adam jokes.

“No, you knobhead.” He rubs his cheek against Adam’s chest, getting comfortable, and Adam gets a whiff of his hair meanwhile. “It’s good. I like it. It smells like you.”

“Right.” Adam’s head makes a small thump against the pillows behind it. He’s not moved at all, completely stiff-backed and awkward with Thomas’ arm looped so casually around his waist. He tries to uncurl his arm from where Thomas is lying on it but that only gives him more berth to scoot further against his armpit. He’s glad at least that he’s had the foresight to shower that evening which is often not the case when he works double shifts at the diner.

“I like your smell too,” Adam finds himself saying. Then adds, because he can’t help it, “This is the weirdest fucking conversation I’ve ever had in my life.”

Thomas actually laughs, his breaths blowing warm spots across Adam’s chest. “Yes, well. I’m drunk. What’s your excuse?”

Adam doesn’t have any. He starts stroking Thomas’ hair, not thinking about what that will mean in the morning, not thinking about anything at all. He hears Thomas make a contented noise and watches him close his eyes. Later he’ll absently take in the fact that Thomas doesn’t snore at all, though he does grind his teeth in his sleep. He sleeps in fits and only after Adam squeezes him, once, twice, three times for good dreams does he stop his restless shifting.

Now though, Adam just watches him. Thomas sighs and squashes his cheek against the cotton of Adam’s shirt. Adam pulls Thomas’ coat all over the both of them because they’re lying on top of the blankets and he doesn’t want to jar them out of alignment. Everything seems to fit perfectly against all odds: his arm around Thomas’ shoulders, Thomas’ own resting against his waist, Thomas’ head on his chest and his breathing settling in rhythm to his, slow and steady. 

Adam forces himself to stay still.

Thomas starts to say something in a drowsy murmur that has Adam closing his eyes too. 

“This is my favourite coat,” Thomas says. “It was my dad’s, once. He gave it to me when I turned fifteen.”

Adam succumbs to the band of heaviness seeping behind his eyelids and nods. “Yeah?” he yawns. He tries to picture it, Thomas at fifteen, wearing this big burgundy coat, the sleeves too long, the pockets swallowing his hands. “That’s nice,” he settles on.

Thomas hums in agreement. Out in the hall there’s a series of rustling noises, footsteps. Light seeps in through the crack under the door. It’s Adam’s mom, probably, knowing her erratic sleeping pattern. 

Adam listens to her moving around outside and then listens to Thomas breathing, in and out. He’s asleep within minutes.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Adam snorts awake before his alarm. He looks around for a moment, taking in his surroundings with a bleary eye until he remembers last night. Then he rakes a hand through his hair as he sits up, not exactly surprised to find empty space next to him. It doesn’t change the fact he’s disappointed, though that’s more self-directed than anything; he’s annoyed he’s letting Thomas’ non-presence in his bed affect himin more ways than it should even when Thomas should be free to go home whenever he wants.

Morning is blanketing the room in a soft yellow haze, making everything feel like a dream. And maybe it is a dream, Adam thinks. Maybe with any luck he’s still asleep.He doesn’t have to come into work until a little after lunch, anyway.

Adam touches the bed covers, runs his hand across the tundra of where Thomas’ body has pressed soft indentations. 

He laughs quietly to himself and goes back to sleep. 

Half an hour later he finally drags himself out of bed when the need to empty his bladder makes itself known. He’s halfway down the hall on his way back to his room when he hears it: laughter, downstairs. 

It’s curiosity that makes him pad into the kitchen to see who’s making all that noise, and he stops short at the door when he sees Thomas leaning against the kitchen island, ladling pancakes onto a plate. By all accounts he should be nursing a hangover, slumped in bed and drugged to his ears in painkillers. By all accounts, he shouldn’t even be here in Adam’s kitchen.

Meanwhile, Adam’s sister Caroline is sitting at the table in pyjamas, her feet up on a chair as she sips from an enormous mug of coffee.

The scene is enough to make Adam do a double take. He blinks and then blinks again, and disbelief washes over him when he notices that Thomas has an apron on plus a handkerchief of some kind that Adam has never seen before tied around his headand acting as a makeshift bandana to keep his hair out of his face. 

Adam is still trying to make sense of it when Thomas catches sight of him at the door and starts looking at him like Adam has just insinuated himself in the middle of a very important conversation which Caroline and Thomas will now have to cease. 

Abruptly, Caroline cranes her neck to look at Adam, the legs of her chair dipping backwards dangerously.

“Hi,” Adam cuts in, already feeling awkward. He glances at the table and notes that there are plates filled with food: breakfast. Eggs and strips of bacon crisped just how he likes them, a mountainous pile of waffles, some baked beans and hash. Something smells really good. It looks like Thomas got the percolator working again.

“What the hell is this?” Adam says.

“This, Adam, is breakfast,” Thomas answers primly. “Have a seat.” He points to the empty chair next to Caroline before pouring him a steaming cup of coffee. 

Adam raises his eyebrows skeptically and ignores the look of amusement Caroline sends his way.

“You didn’t tell me you made a new friend,” she says to him in a stage whisper, punching him gently on the shoulder. Then she winks at Thomas.“He doesn’t have friends,” she tells him.

Adam stares at her incredulously. Sometimes he wonders how they’re even related. And then he remembers. He kicks the back of her chair and it makes a terrible scraping sound against the linoleum. “Shut the fuck up Caroline!”

“You should run while you still can,” Caroline says to Thomas, laughing as she talks over Adam as usual. “My little brother is an asshole and that’s his one defining character trait. He has no redeeming qualities whatsoever save for the fact he can forgo all sorts of hygiene in the midst of an artistic break though which was really just him discovering his dick for the first time at age twelve.”

“Fuck you,” Adam says with a completely straight face. He flicks a piece of bacon at her then another but she deflects the blows with a well-timed raise of her arm, her grin widening. “See what I mean?”

“I’m beginning to,” Thomas affirms, and Adam is ready to lob a cutting reply except Thomas’ voice is fond when he says it and when Adam glances at him his smile is fond too. Warmth creeps up Adam’s neck at that and he starts shoveling food into his plate just to have something to do, again pointedly ignoring Caroline’s openly teasing stares. She is dead to him. He’ll never do her any favors again.

Later,wonders of wonders, she volunteers to drive Thomas home. Adam marvels over the speed with which she and Thomas have suddenly become _friends_ — how long have they been talking in the kitchen, how long had he really been asleep — but really this shouldn’t be surprising. Thomas can build rapport with just about anyone, and sales at the diner have gone up exponentially ever since he stood outside on the sidewalk stuffed into a pie costume and handed out fliers. He can charm the pants off the most difficult customer, and it’s not just to do with the fact he has an accent and is therefore deemed brilliant by default. He really does care about helping people, making sure they get what they want. Adam has seen this firsthand when Thomas had crouched down next to a wailing kid and asked them if they would like to have chocolate shavings in their milkshake even when it was something the diner didn’t really do.

They pack Thomas’ bikein the trunk. It’s red, with a little basket in front of it with matching tassels, borrowed from a neighbor apparently, a young girl. Adam says nothing about that as he and Thomas pile into the backseat of the car where they attempt to survive Caroline’s tumultuous driving. She keeps rolling over every speed bump in town, it seems like, pausing too long at intersections which she says is because she’s been sorely out of practice. Nobody drives a car in New York; practically everyone uses the subway. She smacks Adam’s hand when he reaches over to change the radio station. 

“Driver gets to pick the tunes. Sit down asshole!”

“You’re an asshole!”

“Fuck you,” she says.

“Fuck you!” Adam intones.

Adam helps Thomas unload his bike when they finally drop him off at his driveway and he walks him back to his front door where his aunt is waiting for him with her lips pursed, short of impatiently tapping her foot. She’s wearing a dressing robe and has her arms crossed. She nods absently as they approach.

“Hi Mrs McGregor,” Adam says, unable to hold her gaze for longer than two seconds.

“Hi Adam,” Mrs McGregor says unhappily. 

Adam turns back to Thomas. “I’ll see you at the diner.” 

“Right,” Thomas replies, looking vaguely ill, probably already thinking about the fate awaiting him. It’s almost lunch time; he’d been gone all morning, having disappeared all night without informing his uncle or aunt. Briefly, Adam is hit with the urge to grab his hand and squeeze it, but the feeling passes and he waves at Thomas before walking back to the car, watching him and his aunt disappear into the house before slipping into the backseat.

As they’re driving back home, Adam manages to convince Caroline to play normal radio instead of the barrage of show tunes she’s insisted on in the last fifteen minutes. The change in mood is palpable now that Thomas is no longer hovering in the background. It’s not a bad atmosphere per se; his absence is simply noticeable. 

“He seems like a nice boy,” Caroline says at the first red light, giving Adam a sidelong glance. She sounds like their mom.

“What does that even mean,” Adam says. He tries not to sound defensive but Caroline knows all his tells. Sometimes he hates how close they used to be.

“You should be nice to him,” Caroline says. 

“I’m always nice to him.”

“Okay, sure, I somehow doubt that.” She rolls her eyes, then hums along to the song in the background, tapping her hand on the steering wheel in a syncopated rhythm. Then she adds, “He seems to like you a lot.”

Adam looks at her.

“Which,” she continues, “Will forever remain one of the world’s greatest mysteries.” She laughs, and it’s a little mean. 

Adam meets her gaze in the rearview mirror. Her eyes look like they’re smiling but sometimes with his sister that can mean anything.

*

Adam tries not to think about what Caroline means. It’s easily negligible, barely worth his time at all, but he finds himself dwelling on the many implications of Thomas liking him. A lot. 

The next day, Thomas is at the diner after a self- imposed day off and he looks like he always does in a short-sleeved button up with his name tag pinned perfectly to his shirt and Adam still can’t stop thinking about it. 

Adam isn’t expecting him to show up unannounced on a Tuesday morning on his day off. He should be elsewhere, at the diner, upselling unsuspecting customers pie. Or teaching Big Ben how to make eggs over easy, gently sliding the eggs onto the pan _just so_. Or organizing the storage room which he’s still terrified of being left alone in without a doorstop to hold the door ajar. Any number things, really, that don’t warrant his sudden appearance knocking Adam’s center of balance.

“What are you doing here?” Adam asks, clutching a piece of toast in the same hand he had used to open the door. Then because that sounded so mean, he recants,“Hi. What the actual fuck.”

Thomas returns his stare placidly. “Caroline invited me over. Good morning to you too.” 

“Are you friends now? Is that it?”

Despite the overly aggressive interrogation, Thomas just smiles and tips his head to one side. He doesn’t actually answer the question. Instead he says, “May I come in?” and Adam is so blown over by the fact he’s standing on his doorstep on a bright Tuesday morning that he opens the door all the way to let him through. 

Turns out, Caroline had somehow gotten Thomas’ number and had thought to invite him over for lunch. 

They drag the inflatable pool to the backyard, after. Adam has not seen that thing since grade school. Despite the holes having to be patched up hastily with duck tape, Caroline and Thomas manage to fill it up with water, resulting in a misshapen mass of bright PVC taking up most of the yard. 

They sit on deck chairs in the back lawn, dipping their feet and sipping pre-made fruit cocktails from a can. It’s a seasonably hot day for June, the heat making the ground shimmer in waves, and Adam is starting to cotton on to the fact Caroline wishes to make his life miserable solely because she’s petty as hell. She knows their mom had asked him to do some yard work today which happens to include trimming the grass and weeding the flowerbeds in the tiny garden that she’s got set up in a desperate attempt to start a hobby. 

Now the petunias have started to wilt from neglect and there’s an ant hill by the lemon tree, suspiciously gathering height by the day. Adam takes the grass cutter from the shed and ignores the fact Thomas and Caroline are watching him the whole time, Caroline giggling as she pushes her sunglasses up her nose.

“Take your shirt off!” She heckles, throwing a handful of popcorn at him like this is a movie theater and he’s the spectacle. He flips her off and slips his headphones on, turning the volume up on his walkman and pretending he isn’t sneaking glances at them every now and then from the corner of his eye: talking, laughing, refilling their drinks. Thomas ducks his head in the shade and when he laughs, he does it with his whole body, at one point throwing his head back.

The sun is strong overhead, bright and hollering, matting Adam’s shirt to his back. He’s wearing one of his dad’s old sweaters, the sleeves cut off and half of the bottom missing. Thomas doesn’t razz him to hell like Caroline does but he does flit a glance at Adam every now and then, not that Adam takes notice. Adam gets most of the work done in an hour and sweats like a pig, squatting down next to his mother’s half-dead vegetable plot to wipe his face against the back of his arm. 

A lone shadow looms over him, blocking most of the sun, and when he looks up he’s surprised to see Thomas who wordlessly hands him a water bottle. He really does look good in those jeans, Adam thinks. They hug the lean lines of his legs though his shirt is rumpled at the back, flattened where he must have sat in it. 

After being stuck in collared shirts for the duration of summer, a t-shirt and jeans with his arms uncovered and his neck bare are pretty much the equivalent of Thomas walking around naked. Adam doesn’t know why this particular thought nags at him and he keeps staring until he notices that streaks of sun are dappling the fine layer of hair on Thomas’ arms. It’s a tiny detail barely worth any attention but it distracts him just the same.

“Are you quite done?” Thomas says, and Adam blinks dumbly at him before capping the water bottle closed.

“What?”

“You’ve been weeding that spot for the longest time,” Thomas explains.

“Why aren’t you at the diner?” Adam asks, deflecting because that’s what he does best. One day, it’s probably going to bite him in the ass so he tries to get away with it whenever he can.

For a second, Thomas looks thoughtful then a smile starts to warp his expression, starting from the corner of his lips. “I thought I’d take a day off,” he says finally.

“But you never take days off,” Adam reminds him.

“Well, there’s a first time for everything,” Thomas muses. 

They lapse into silence but it’s not completely uncomfortable. Adam pulls sips of water from the bottle while Thomas just stands there with his hands in his pockets, surveying the yard. 

Then Adam remembers that he needs to bag up the leaves for compost or his mom will have his head. He stands to his feet and stretches out his legs to do just that, massaging his calves when they start to cramp up. The action brings him face to face with Thomas’ lower torso as he uncurls himself to his full height. Thomas is wearing a thin leather belt, and the buckle gleams dully when it catches the light.

“Nice jeans,” Adam comments, because someone has to say it. 

Thomas smiles again, glancing down at himself like he’s only just noticed his clothes for the first time. He shifts a little from foot to foot. He’s still wearing loafers like he’s forty years old. “Do you think so?” he says. “I suppose they fit quite nicely, don’t they.”

“Like a glove,” Adam affirms, and blushes the minute he realizes he’d voice the thought out loud. He deflects again by asking about Thomas’ parents which is of course always the best way to demolish any agreeable mood between them.

Thomas’ face can be expressive at times, but he’s also good at appearing outwardly calm, keeping people at arm’s length by affecting a cold politeness that throw most everyone off. Right now he stares into space before shrugging his shoulders, and then he looks at Adam in a way that he hasn’t in a long time, not since they’d sat together in the warm darkness of Adam’s basement and fallen asleep, drunk on shitty gin; since he’d sent Adam home with a slice of cherry pie that Adam could still taste even in his dreams; since he’d knocked Kenneth Moore flat on his ass and then called Adam a daft prick before kneeling in front of him to cup his face in his hand.

“I’m leaving,” Thomas states after a moment.

Adam considers this for a minute. Thomas is leaving; summer is only halfway over. He’s leaving and Adam shouldn’t give a fuck but he’s an idiot and so he lets it affect him the same way he lets little things pile up inside him until they feel like they’re going to burst through his skin and he has no room left to breathe.

“What the fuck,” Adam says. _What the actual fuck_ , he thinks. Fuck, fuck, fuck. _Fuck_. “When?”

“Next week,” Thomas replies. His expression never wavers. 

“Are you fucking serious? Are you fucking with me?” Adam huffs. “That’s too soon,” he says. _Unfair_ , he doesn’t say.

“Well it’s not as if I woke up this morning and decided I had to leave,” Thomas tells him, and his voice is steady with an undercurrent of impatience. Adam can’t help but notice that he’s clipping his words. “My mum rang last night. She needs me back in London, says she wants to discuss some things in person. I suppose this may have to do with the very lengthy e-mail I’d just sent her. About, as you know, my finding out she’d been having an affair.” He finally blinks. “Anyway, this was going to happen sooner or later. It was only a temporary arrangement, is the thing. My parents wanted me out of the way while they sorted out their divorce and my uncle and aunt offered to host me for the summer, and I was always going to leave, in the end. That was the plan. I never intended to stay. I was actually supposed to go on a trip to Belize but.” He shrugs and trails off. 

Adam says nothing as he stands there and tries hard to absorb everything being said. He feels strangely detached from it all even as he nods, just the once. “Next week you said?”

“Friday.” 

That’s ten days from now. 

Thomas continues to watch Adam carefully, as if anticipating a sudden outburst that never comes. 

When the screen door bangs open, they glance up at the same time: it’s Caroline, wanting to know if they want anything from the kitchen.

* 

After, Adam feels like shit. He wakes up, eyes stinging and salty, and thinks, he feels like shit. He takes his bike out of the shed, pedals hard, and street after street, red light after red light, block after block, he feels like shit. He goes to work, talks sometimes, smiles, but the only thing that stops the shitty feeling even for a minute is gin though the relief is short-lived and alcohol has the tendency to make him over-dramatic and violent. 

He realizes he has a problem when he blacks out and comes to staring at the ceiling and Thomas’ face suddenly comes to view. He looks — _troubled_ which Adam has a hard time trying to make sense of as he isn’t used to seeing it so candidly, not in such close proximity. He’s seen Thomas frustrated, angry, petulant. He’s seen him terrified, after having accidentally locked himself in a storage room. But this, this is a first.

“Fuck,” Adam swears quietly.

“Your sister said you tried to dig a hole in the yard all the way to China.”

Adam clenches his teeth and rubs a hand over his face. He needs to get up. He needs to shower. He can smell himself, the stench sharp and rank like vomit. How long has he been lying on the floor like this; all the muscles in his body are aching. “Fuck,” he repeats with a little more force.

“Indeed,” Thomas agrees.

Adam stares at him dead in the eye, ignoring the urge to swallow. He looks like he’s come straight from the diner. He forgot to take his name tag off and briefly Adam wonders what time it is. “Sorry,” he says a little too intensely, still having a little problem with volume control, and depth perception, still probably a little drunk. The room keeps tilting every which way even when he isn’t doing anything but moving his head. “Sorry, I — did I come to work today? Sorry, fuck.”

“You called in sick. Didn’t you —” Thomas doesn’t say _remember_ and Adam is glad because he doesn’t anyway. He can’t remember how he got here. He shuts his eyes for a minute, opens them again. Adam touches his lip, which feels freshly bruised from having chewedhard on it. He can’t remember. He tries to sit up and only succeeds part of the way before Thomas is dragging him by the forearm with a labored grunt, leaning him against the wall. 

“ _Hup_ ,” Thomas says. “There’s a boy.”

Adam groans and lolls his head. He reeks. He wonders how Thomas can stand it. When he starts taking his shirt off, Thomas stares at him for a second and then helps him out of it. His hands are cool on Adam’s overheated skin, his touch making him want to shiver and sigh.

“Can you get up?” Thomas asks. 

Adam thinks about this. _No_. But that doesn’t stop him from attempting to anyway, clutching the wall for balance as he staggers to the bathroom. He stands in the shower longer than intended, braced against the tile as cold water beats down his back. His fingers have wrinkled to prunes when Thomas starts knocking at the door. 

“You better not have fallen asleep in there. Adam?”

“Yeah,” Adam says belatedly. He turns off the water and wraps a towel around his waist. Thomas is sitting on the bed with the window open when Adam returns feeling halfway human and less likely to tip over to the side and throw up. He looks suddenly small, surrounding by the detritus of Adam’s everyday crap, the rumpled bed sheets and lumpy pillow, the ugly beige carpeting, the random mess of things that are lying around on the floor.

Dutifully, Thomas turns away when Adam starts to dress.

“Do you mind if I smoke?” 

Adam pulls sweatpants on, and has his arms half-buried in a shirt when he turns, in time to see Thomas pull a pack of bruised Parliaments from his pocket and flick a lighter in his other hand. Adam shrugs and chucks the towel at the bean bag in the corner. “By all means give yourself cancer.”

Thomas snorts, pocketing his cigarettes again. “You don’t have to be a prick about it.”

Adam doesn’t reply. Right now he’s feeling a little volatile and Thomas’ presence isn’t helping; in fact it’s doing the exact opposite: he feels capable of anything. He flops down on the bed, and is immediately assaulted with a tidal wave of exhaustion that has him feeling sick again for a moment. He knows Thomas is watching him even with his eyes closed, can sense the weight of his gaze, even, but Adam continues to say nothing and the silence stretches long enough to kill him.

“Go to sleep,” Thomas tells him, voice sounding muffled and far away.

Adam grunts and throws an arm over his face. It’s pretty late and Thomas shouldn’t be here. Adam grunts again in answer.

“It’s all right. I’ll be here.”

“You should go home,” Adam says. “Just leave.” 

“Adam,” Thomas whispers. “Adam.”

“What.”

Thomas says his name again. “It’s all right,” he sighs. The bed dips next to Adam but he ignores it along with the gentle hand touching his forearm. He thinks of that day, weeks ago, when he’d first noticed Thomas’ hands. Then he thinks about those hands — moving, working, covered in flour, wrapped around the handle of a mop, or touching the bend of his elbow, always in constant motion. 

“I’ll be here,” Thomas repeats. “It’s all right. Just go to sleep, Adam.”

Thomas’ hand strokes his hair. Turns out that’s all the prompting Adam needs because he drifts off quickly after.

Adam hasn’t had a dream in a long while but that night he dreams about swimming in a lake with Thomas. The sun shines down on the water, making it shine like coins, the color the kind of green Adam has only ever seen in paintings. Water laps up at his ears, plugging out the sound intermittently. He tries to stay afloat but he’s already getting tired. There’s nothing save for sun and sky and a strip of shore where he can see Thomas waving at him from the dock, a speck so small it could have been anyone. 

The sun is bright in Adam’s eyes so he doesn’t see Thomas dive into the water, going under with a loud cry. After that: nothing. 

A bird flits overhead. 

Adam calls Thomas’ name, over and over. When Thomas doesn’t surface, he wakes up.

*

He’d slept all night. It’s morning already —  early , that the light outside is still that kind of blue-black that precedes dawn. Adam blinks, once, twice, the third time to make sure he isn’t still dreaming. Thomas is leaning above him, watching him, his eyes unreadable in the dark. His hands are braced on top of the covers, and their noses are almost touching, his hair a dark curtain that shrouds them both. Adam can smell him, that familiar scent that fills him with a pang of longing for things he doesn’t even know the name of; they’re close enough that he can see the pale spikes of Thomas’ eyelashes, the freckles that echo across his nose before fading away. 

Thomas’ body tilted is towards Adam as if he’s about to —

Adam grabs him by the front of his shirt — easy as anything but Thomas stills his wrist to halt the motion. 

Thomas hovers for a small moment, breathing along with him, still not blinking, and neither of them moves, not until Adam finally tilts his chin and kisses Thomas there on the last exhale. And it feels like some part of him is finally unloosened, because the rest comes easy: sliding his hand around Thomas’ neck to wind it in Thomas’ hair, which to Adam’s surprise is softer than it looks. And then kissing him again, their mouths moving slowly. He doesn’t know what he’s doing.

Thomas’ skin burns warm under Adam’s palm. He doesn’t move away when Adam parts his lips, he shivers, pressing their foreheads together like he’s cold and makes a small noise in his throat when Adam drags his other hand to the small of his back, pulling their bodies close, closer, until they’re slotted hip to hip. Adam can feel himself getting hard, because he’s only a teenager, and feels the answering throb of Thomas’ dick right against his thigh. He’s going to die; he’s sure of it. He’s embarrassed how it only takes so little to kill him but he’s never kissed another guy before, not like this, so clear-headed without the haze of alcohol that he can’t make any excuses about it in the morning. But this isn’t just another guy, this is Thomas. Thomas whose hands are shaking when they wrinkle the fabric of Adam’s shirt. 

Adam can’t stop kissing him. He can think of nothing but Thomas and how sweet he tasted, how his body seemed to move in perfect synchronicity to his, how they could probably do anything and everything here in the dark, as long as they never left the bed, and no one would even know, no one would have to know. It could be their little secret. This could be something that only belonged to them.

“I can’t,” Thomas says, over and over. “I can’t.” 

He sounds like he’s about to cry, or worse yet, flee, but he still lets Adam kiss him in between breaths. 

Adam is tempted to scream in his face and ask, _what_. _Can’t what?_ Because it seems absurd that they’re only learning how to do this now, finding another way to drive each other up the wall without words when their time together is almost up. It seems absurd that Adam wants to beg him don’t go, don’t leave. Because life may be full of surf and sun but when Thomas leaves it will be hard again.

“What the hell are we doing then?” Adam can’t help but asking. “What the fuck is this?”

Thomas shakes his head. “I don’t know,” he stammers. “I don’t know.” His face is pulled into such a melancholy expression that Adam lets him go when he starts to shift out of his grip. 

“I need to go,” Thomas says. And he goes, and Adam lets him, watching him stumble into his shoes and not even bother closing the door on his way out. Adam lays there on his bed for five seconds, and then ten, before hitting the floor running, feed thudding the stairs, catching Thomas outside as he’s just about to clamber onto his bike — not the same one from last time with the tassels, thank fucking god, but a proper one with a deep blue paint. 

It suits him. Adam wants to smash it to the ground solely because he knows it has the capacity to take Thomas far away. In fact, he wants to smash everything within reach: the lamp post, the sidewalk, the jumbled mess of feelings clawing its way out like a creature from inside his chest. Himself for being so stupid. For thinking this was going to mean something in the end. People like him don’t get happy endings, and he’s just a kid so none of this will really matter, not in five years, or ten. Maybe not even in six months. But it still feels like his entire world is being upended. It still hurts. His heart is pounding noticeably. But from what, he doesn’t know. 

“Thomas,” Adam says. He’s barefoot and the ground is cold, damp. “Thomas, do you want to stay.” He’s not asking and he knows that Thomas knows it.

Still, Thomas won’t even look at him. It’s funny to Adam how he can go from wanting to kiss his mouth to wanting to punch it. “I can’t. I’m sorry, I need — I need to go home.”

_Do you really_ , Adam wants to ask, amazed by how they can be having two conversations all at once, but of course he doesn’t say that because he’s a fucking coward. He’s big, and can take punches as hard as he can throw them but when it comes down to it, he’s a coward. Maybe that’s why he can never be an actor: he’s nothing like his heroes, certainly not Humphrey Bogart who always knew what to say at any given time, who was suave and charming and always got the girl. He’ll be the understudy that chokes on his lines whenever he’s forced on stage. He’ll never, ever be good enough.

So instead Adam says, “Fine, then. Okay. Then _go._ ” And steps out of the way when Thomas cycles past him down the sidewalk, stopping before the bend to glance over his shoulder.

“Goodbye,” he hears Thomas say or maybe he’s just mishearing him. “I’ll see you around, Adam.”

“Sure,” Adam says, but Thomas has already disappeared from view.

Later, when he can no longer help himself, Adam sits on the bed and runs his hand over the covers. Morning is creeping in through the curtains as the sky brightens outside. His mom is already awake. Adam can hear her door creaking open across the hall. Or maybe it’s his dad who’s finally come home after a two-week exile. 

Adam crawls on top of covers,punching his pillows three times as per his ritual, then buries his face in them to muffle his screams. 

Afterwards, he sleeps, dreamless.

*

Paulo and the gang throw Thomas a going away party on Friday, exactly seven days before Thomas has to leave. It’s his last shift at the diner. His aunt is coming back the following day to run the place again, just like old times. Probably that means they’ll have to retire the pies or else someone else has to stand in the nascent heat wearing a pie costume while distributing flyers, and it sure as hell won’t be Adam. 

Big Ben, because he’s a Big Bastard, tasks Adam with procuring the going away cake, which is stupid and a lot harder than it seems. He has to get the cake during his lunch break, biking three blocks to the store to point at whichever cake he thinks Thomas will like. He chooses a bland one, with strawberries. He’s been trying not to think about Thomas in the last couple of days and succeeded for the most part, throwing himself into work and barely speaking to him when they’re alone together. Around the others, it’s fine, and Adam can stomach pretending things are all right between them. But when it’s just the two of them, it’s chaos, and Adam feels like breaking everything including himself.

They spring the cake on him during closing — Irene wrapping her hands over Thomas’ eyes as she guides him back to the kitchen where the rest of them are quietly waiting, including the couple guys Adam keeps forgetting the names of and Charlotte, the other waitress. Adam is holding the cake because of course Big Ben wants to make his life difficult. Lately, everyone seems to be on his case, telling him to watch his language and stop yelling at customers. 

Irene lets her hands drop and then someone lets out a whoop. “Happy Birthday!” says one of the guys, and Paulo groans and shakes his head,.

“It’s not his birthday you dumbass!”

Big Ben shakes his head too, then he laughs and everyone starts laughing along, except Adam who feels sick holding the cake he’d picked out himself with the white icing and strawberries on top because he kept thinking, _cherries, cherries,_ _Thomas likes cherries,_ and it was the closet they had to cherries at the store.

Thomas meets his eyes, smiling halfheartedly. Adam looks away when he feels like he can’t look at Thomas anymore, and then Big Ben takes the cake from him and offers to cut everyone a piece.

The whole time, they eye each other over plates of hamburgers and cake, but after one beer Adam slaps Thomas on the back and squeezes his shoulder, telling him how it was great to have him at the diner, that it’s been fun and he’s glad they had him for the summer. Then he tells him goodbye and it feels almost sincere for a second, just the two of them making jokes and talking about the cake — too sweet, Thomas says, — and what to do with the day’s leftover pie.

They’re the last ones to leave, after Adam offers to clean up in the kitchen because he’s an idiot with a masochistic streak with no ounce of self-preservation. Thomas is packing up, locking all the doors, wiping up tables, hanging up his apron one last time before slipping off his hairnet. 

He’ll miss that hairnet, Adam thinks absently, and everything attached to it. Then he snorts out a laugh, feeling delirious and Thomas looks at him oddly but Adam just shrugs and crouches down to unplug the jukebox. Then he turns the lights out in the kitchen, the lights flicking off one by one as if highlighting how final this all feels, the end of the line.

“You forgot your name tag,” Adam points out, accepting the ring of keys Thomas hands him: they’re all in there, the key to the front door, the side door, the storage room, jangling from Thomas’ grip. Plus the dozen other ones Adam doesn’t even know what they open.

“ _Oh_ ,” Thomas says and touches his name tag self-consciously. He unpins it from his shirt, flexing his hand around it. When he looks up, Adam expects him to be smiling but he isn’t.

“I suppose that’s it, then,” Thomas says, tugging his leather messenger bag from where it’s sitting on the kitchen island. He looks at everything, the empty tables, the gleaming countertop, the license plates crowding the wall and gathering dust, taking his fill, then he glances at Adam and nods.

“Thanks for tonight,” he says.

Adam swallows, nodding back, but it’s an empty gesture, devoid of any meaning. “Sure,” he says, and he’s the first one to walk out of the diner, almost jumping in surprise when the bell above sounds as he exits. As he’s unchaining his bike, he makes the mistake of looking up, seeing Thomas just standing there inside, not moving at all, still where Adam had left him. 

Five minutes later the rest of the lights start to flicker shut until the diner is plunged into darkness and the sign outside goes out too, the loopy red letters spelling _McGregor’s_ blinkering in and out. Thomas steps outside, locking the door behind him, sliding his hands in his pockets. A cool breeze works its way toward the both of them, making Adam shiver where he stands.

Thomas startles when he sees Adam still there, watching him, one foot resting on the pedal of his bike, not moving like a complete idiot. They stare at each for a long time until another breeze blows past, bits of trash cartwheeling across the sidewalk, catching Adam’s foot. It’s rather dramatic. 

“Thomas,” Adam says. The words are out before he can take them back. “Do you want to come home with me?”

Thomas blinks and then clears his throat. “What?”

“I said, do you want to come home with me. I’m not gonna ask again.”

“I don’t know what —”

“Fuck! Do you or do you not want to come home with me? Yes or no. It shouldn’t be that hard. Yes or no. I won’t ask you again, this is it okay? This is fucking it. Do you or do you not fucking want to? Come home with me.”

Something in Thomas’ expression hardens and then he looks livid and then terrified and then livid again, all in the space of the next minute. His eyes are narrowed to dark slits, his face flushing. His hands clench at his sides then unclench again. “Yes! All right! I’ll come with you! Fuck! You don’t have to be so mean about it! Yes!”

“Good!” Adam says, and then: “Good! Fucking. _Jesus Christ._ You’re such a—” he doesn’t get to finish the thought before he’s pushing himself off his bike, walking over to Thomas to kiss him right there on the sidewalk where anyone can see. But he doesn’t give a fuck. All he cares about right now is kissing Thomas, getting his hands in his hair and keeping him close. 

“I’m sorry,” Adam whispers after a moment. “I’m sorry for yelling, I’m sorry for, for—” he doesn’t know, but he doesn’t move his mouth away even when Thomas grabs him by the sides of his shirt and hisses, “Shut up, just shut up.”

It feels like they kiss for a long time.

*

Later, Adam feels like an idiot after a shower which Thomas had insisted on. They take turns in the bathroom because they’re doing this. They’re really doing this. Now he smells like the shower gel his sister uses, slightly minty, his skin cool and shivering. 

When he walks into his bedroom, Thomas is under the covers, already naked with his clothes neatly folded on the desk chair. His hair has left damp patches on the pillows but Adam doesn’t really mind. 

“Hi,” Adam says, and shuts the door behind him with a click.

“Hello,” Thomas echoes, sitting up just slightly.

Adam can see the outline of his body under the covers, the narrow shape of him, his chest lifting and falling as he breathes. He’s skinny, smaller and soft with delicate lines. Adam crawls over to the bed, still clutching the knot of the towel wrapped around his waist, and thenpours himself on top of Thomas because he can no longer help himself, cupping his face and opening his mouth to receive his tongue-filled kiss. 

Dimly, he’s aware of the towel slipping off his waist but he’s more surprised to find Thomas pushing it out of the way with an eager hand. Their gazes meet and Thomas flushes, glancing quickly from staring probingly at Adam’s dick, then he peels back the covers to invite Adam inside, leaning back on his elbows and waiting, waiting. His ribs are taut, but not obvious. His nipples are puffy, pink even in the silty light coming from the street lamp outside.

He’s beautiful, but Adam has known this all along. He isn’t blind, or stupid. He’d thought Thomas was beautiful the first time he’d seen him, standing alone at the counter with his little notebook and pen. 

Adam slides in, careful not to touch him but then Thomas’ hands are on his skin again, drifting up and down his back, squeezing his forearms, and knowing exactly what to do to make him shudder and groan. It makes Adam wonder if he’s done this before. If he’d learned how to kiss like this in boarding school, closing his eyes after every exhale, surging up to kiss Adam again, clicking their teeth together, leaning up and shivering, exposing the pale line of his throat which Adam buries his face against and breathes. He never wants to leave the comforting warmth of it. He stays there for a long time, up close, his mouth moving soundlessly across Thomas’ neck, his tongue tracing a wet path up the tangy underside of Thomas’ ear where the skin is softest, and Thomas pants, his body lifting up, up, against Adam’s chest, his hand tight on Adam’s shoulder. 

Other parts of him, they move too: under the covers, Thomas spreads his legs, opening them wide enough so that their naked thighs are rubbing. The friction the action creates makes Adam yelp, and then he’s hard within seconds, already smearing precome on Thomas’ skin as he tries not to bite down hard on Thomas’ bottom lip. He tries not to hump him against the mattress, either, or bear down with all his weight. Instead he wraps one arm around Thomas and something about his hidden smallness makes Adam grip him harder in response. He starts to murmur but can’t make sense of any it; it’s gibberish but he doesn’t care and he doesn’t stop kissing Thomas’ neck.

Thomas is holding his breath like he doesn’t want Adam want to feel the soft skin of his belly; Adam can feel his stomach shivering from the effort but Adam wants it, all of it, every bit of Thomas he’s willing to give him; he’s always been a greedy boy. He runs a hand down Thomas’ ribs, spreading his fingers over where the gaps lie. Then he places his other palm on Thomas’ stomach, stroking his thumb across the skin of his belly button. 

Thomas just stares at him, breathing hard, his eyes hazy with arousal. His nipples are peaking; they’re so small that Adam wants to kiss them and put them in his mouth. 

“Fuck. Can I —” He runs the pad of his thumb over the left one, and Thomas nods before hissing, “yes, yes, please, do it, come on, please, Adam, please,” still being polite about it like it’s some inane request he has just agreed to. 

Adam sucks on them, one at a time, going on instinct because he’s never done this before to another guy, plucking at the opposite nipple while his mouth is occupied with another. He sucks the soft skin between his lips, twists his tongue hard around the nub, letting it go with a loud pop. When he finishes, he’s harder than he remembers being in his life, throbbing with the need to come and press his dick against something, someone, against Thomas.

Thomas is hard against his belly too, sticky, his cock a plump curve, shorter but full and — _fuck_ , pretty. Adam’s never thought that about dicks before, it’s kind of laughable, but no other description seems to fit the bill. Everything about Thomas is pretty: his pink, puffy nipples, shining with Adam’s slobber, the minute tremors of his body, even the way his face scrunches up when Adam curls a spit-slick hand around his erection and tugs once, and then another time, pulling out a soft purring moan that Adam feels reverberate inside his own chest. 

Adam has big palms so Thomas’ dick fit perfectly in his hand, the head peeking between the circle of his fingers after each stroke. Adam has a crazy idea to cover Thomas all over with his come, but he doesn’t think he’ll last long enough to be able to move away from him and point his dick at his chest at the same time so he lets the idea slide, maybe for another time. 

Besides, this is enough, just the two of them chest to chest, undulating like a wave, groaning into each other’s mouth. Adam rubs his dick against Thomas’ hip and Thomas rolls his hips forward in answer, gripping his sweaty hair, keeping it out of Adam’s face. His cock jumps in Adam’s hand when Adam bites on his bottom lip. 

“This is good,” Adam says, “So good. You feel so good.”

“Yes,” Thomas breathes. “I like it. I know. You feel good too. I like your _cock_. I like how it feels on me.” The way he says the word _cock_ shouldn’t be so thrilling but it pings something primal inside Adam that makes him growl and bite a kiss to Thomas’ mouth.

He tastes like salt and heat and Adam wants to fuck him like he’s seen once in a porno, just grab him by the ankles and pound him into the bed, or fuck him on all fours on the floor, or bent over the desk, his hands gripping the corners as he takes Adam’s cock. But then Adam looks at Thomas’ sweet face, crumpling like a deck of cards, and thinks, _no_ : he deserves more than that. 

They move together, no longer kissing and the only sound in Adam’s ear is Thomas’ rough breath. Adam presses up against Thomas’ leg and licks his neck. He has a thing for Thomas’ neck — the sleek slender line of it — then his hand tightens around Thomas, his thumb sliding over the slippery head of his cock, coming away with a dripping line of precome. 

Thomas’ hips jerk forward and his head tilts back. “Adam,” he cries out, thighs shaking, “Adam, _ngh—”_ and then his hips start pulsing, and then he’s coming, and coming, the sight of it enough to send Adam off too, shooting like a geyser as he drags his dick up and down Thomas’ hip to ride out the feeling and press his come against Thomas’ skin. It feels like an out of body experience, his orgasm gripping him by the throat and wringing him dry. 

He watches Thomas pant and buck and shudder, his chest heaving.

Afterwards, Adam waits for the downswing in mood that usually follows an intense orgasm but it never comes; he still feels like he’s a little in love with Thomas, like he’s a kid and stupid and living in a fairytale, not real life. 

Thomas kisses him once they’ve collected themselves, not a real kiss but just an absent glide of lips as he tugs on Adam’s hair, his eyes closed. He can’t seem to stop stroking it, knotting his fingers in the strands, damp from a combination of water and sweat. He feels so good against Adam’s skin, shivering and smelling like sweat, like come, that Adam is convinced he’s made for him, like they’re two puzzle pieces with jagged edges that incongruously fit.

“What’s up?” Adam whispers, when Thomas opens his eyes. His breath tingles up Adam’s spine. “Hey.” He presses his nose to Thomas’ cheek.

“What?” Thomas says hazily, then looks at him, blinking. “ _Oh_ ,” he whispers. Then he yanks the covers over the both of them and rolls them over so he’s lying on top. 

*

Caroline walks in on them three days later because she doesn’t know how to knock. There’s nothing to walk in on, at that point, because they’re just kissing under the covers, though ten minutes ago Adam had been balls deep inside Thomas’ ass, Thomas’ sock-covered feet bobbing in the air, the both of them completely naked. Now they’re just kissing lazily, half-asleep while Adam grinds Thomas against the mattress purely out of habit. 

They’ve figured out how to fuck through trial and error: how much lube was needed, how much Thomas can take, the kind of fucking Adam wants to do versus the kind Thomas can withstand which turns out happens to be a perfect much. There’s nothing Thomas doesn’t want to try and there’s nothing Adam is averse to doing, which means he can go from blowing Thomas under the covers to fucking him hard and fast within minutes. Which also means they’ve tried nearly every conceivable thingthey can think of in the last few days, hardly leaving the bed, bruising themselves like fruit, things Adam liked to believe only they knew how to do and invented. Everything turns him on, the brush of Thomas’ hand on his spine, a single kiss from his responsive mouth, a hand pressed low on his stomach. Everything. 

It slows down sometimes but never gets awkward; most of the time they just kiss and run their hands across each other’s skin until they fall asleep.

The first time had been a night ago, when Thomas slipped a condom over Adam’s cock with shaky hands and then spread his legs at him and said, “Do it. Come on. I can take it.” He showed him the pale inside of his thighs, then, that had Adam so crazy, covered in a myriad of mouth-shaped bruises and slippery with smears of lube. His cock was flushed and fat, curving against his belly. He was the most beautiful thing Adam had ever seen, with his arms stretched above his head, showing the faint fuzz of hair under his arms. 

Thomas wanted it: Adam’s cock in his ass, and it was more than just dirty talk this time in the heat of the moment, he really wanted it; he was asking for it, his hole still puffy after he’d fingered his own ass in preparation, his lips slightly parted in a silent plea, his eyes wet.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes,” Thomas moaned. “Fuck me. Do it now.” 

So Adam did it, and he wasn’t very good at it, sloppy though he had a natural rhythm that didn’t seem to hurt Thomas after a while and had him panting a gasping breath around his tongue. 

Thomas had arched his back and come without touching himself, though the whole time he was lying still so Adam would keep hitting him right _there,_ his legs clasped like a sweaty vice around Adam’s waist, his noises high=pitched like he was starring in a porno. Adam didn’t want to stop, each thrust made him feel like he was seconds away from coming, Thomas tight and clenching reflexively around his dick. 

It felt like they were fucking for hours but in reality Adam barely lasted two minutes. He likes to think he’s gotten better at it, though there are only two other occasions to compare the first time to: the second had been right after their first attempt, the following morning, the third just minutes ago before Caroline had walked in on them, slow and sweet but intense just the same, longer than the first two times. They kissed the entire time, breathing each other’s air, trembling hard and coming at the same time.

“I’m looking for batteries,” Caroline says, standing by the door, staring at them.

Adam can feel the blood coagulate on his face. He’s thankful their lower halves are buried under the covers. He grits his teeth and hides Thomas body from view, Thomas who stiffens in shock underneath him and buries his face in Adam’s neck, groaning in embarrassment. He’s laughing a little but mostly just groaning, his grip tight around Adam’s shoulders, shaking his head and mumbling, “oh god, this is not happening,” under his breath.

“I don’t have any batteries,” Adam says calmly, giving Caroline a warning look. It’s not like she hasn’t walked in on him jerking off before, or with someone in his bed. He’d brought a couple of girls home once he’d learned how to talk to them, and there was that one time with Monty which will never be spoken of again.

“Small ones,” Caroline continues, illustrating their size with two fingers, still staring. “I need it for the remote.”

“Go away,” Adam tells her, glaring at her over his shoulder.

She shrugs, but hovers by the door, looking at them like she wants to say something but then turning her back instead when Adam is convinced she’s about to spout off some sisterly advice she’d read off a motivation poster. 

“By the way mom, wants some chicken nuggets so I’m going to the drive-thru later. You and your boyfriend want anything?” 

Adam sighs and turns his attention back to Thomas who’s so red in the face he resembles a tomato. He’s not his boyfriend, he wants to say, but he lets the misconception linger. He likes the way it sounds even though they’re just friends at this point, just fucking around and making the most of the summer before Thomas has to leave in a few days. 

“You want anything?” he asks Thomas.

Thomas meets his gaze inquisitively. “I _am_ a little hungry,” he admits. The red in his cheeks deepens and Adam is tempted to kiss him again except Caroline still won’t fucking leave.

It’s how they end up in the backseat of Caroline’s car, listening to show tunes while they wait in line for their turn at the window. In the light of the morning, Thomas looks exhausted, his hair a limp mess and his clothes rumpled beyond salvaging. Adam is by no means better off: in an old t-shirt riddled with holes and a pair of sweatpants barely holding on, the two of them smelling like sweat and sex, heady from still being awake to watch the day slide into the next one. They share a smile while Caroline rattles off their orders.

They eat their weight in fast food, swapping burgers every so often, sharing an enormous cup of milkshake and drinking from only one straw. The food is half gone before long and Thomas laughs at all of Caroline’s dumb jokes, flushing in happiness, laughing with his entire body. Months from now, and even several years later, Adam will look back on this day with fondness. There’s nothing about it he’ll want to change. 

All the windows are down, and a cool breeze is blowing in as they drive past rows and rows of sleepy houses. A kid cycles past them on the sidewalk; somewhere, someone’s dog is barking. 

Thomas, leaning his head against the window, his mouth damp from gorging himself on french fries, smiles at Adam faintly, his eyes closed to soft slits. He loves him, Adam thinks. He’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen in his life, and Adam thinks he might be in love with him. He’ll remember this always: the way sunlight glints off the windows, turning the spikes of Thomas’ eyelashes gold. He’ll remember the sound of Thomas’ laughter, and carry it with him for years and years, and he’ll never forget what it feels like to kiss him when he’s sleeping, or when he comes shuddering, or to just kiss him at all.

Thomas yawns and bumps their shoulders together, raising his eyebrows at Adam. Adam bumps back, returning the smile and then closes his hand over Thomas’ when he thinks Caroline isn’t looking.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It’s not even six in the morning but when Adam walks into the kitchen diner, Thomas is already there, his clothes white with patches of flour, his hair covered in a hairnet. He’s baking, because these days he often is. Adam can smell pie cooling on the counter. _Cherries_ , he thinks, and almost sticks his finger into the dough except Thomas is quick to slap away his roving hand. 

“Did you wash your hands?” he says, not even bothering with a good morning, like Adam’s presence is something he’s come to expect.

“No,” Adam sniffs. He wrings his hand morosely, shaking his head, then leaves Thomas in the kitchen to start an enormous pot of coffee and get started on his day. By the time he emerges with a carton of eggs in each hand and after wrestling with the contents of the storage room, the diner is already filled with the usual early birds, people taking their coffee at the counter and reading the morning paper. The jukebox is on again, playing something soft and crooning in French — probably Thomas’ doing, Adam’s seen him hovering around the thing a few times, and giving it a baleful thump with his shoe. 

Thomas pushes a plate of pecan pie across the kitchen island and tugs on Adam’s sleeve to get his attention. Adam blinks.

“On the house,” Thomas says, then gives Adam a meaningful look. He taps the side of his nose before turning away to refill the straw dispenser. 

Adam doesn’t touch the pie until a little later when he’s on his smoke break, and he eats it outside under the noon sun while he’s crouched low on the ground, watching cars driving past. The pie is good, really good, and it makes him think of all the stories his gramma used to read to him as a little kid. In some of them, food had magical properties, making people go crazy or fall in love. In most of them, food was just food, sometimes filled with poison. Soldiers came home from war to a steaming bowl of beef stew, tears filling their eyes as they lost the will to fight. It wasn’t the food that weakened them, Adam knew, even then as a kid, it was the thought of coming home again and then having to leave. 

This is what he thinks about now as he eats the last bites of Thomas’ pecan pie. He glances up when the door opens, and raises his eyebrows at Thomas who looks surprised to see him there even though Adam had loudly announced he was going to take a fifteen minute break and Thomas had nodded absently and waved him off. 

Thomas shuts the door behind him. He’s still wearing that fucking hairnet. He looks harried. Mid-week shifts often do that a person. And despite his being in constant motion, Adam recognizes that he’s just a person too. He gets tired like Adam, like everybody else.

“How’s the pie?” Thomas asks after a moment, freeing a pack of cigarettes Adam doesn’t know how he’s conjured. He really does have such slender hands. “Well?” he asks hopefully when Adam doesn’t respond.

Adam shrugs and stands to his full height, wiping crumbs off his face with a rough swipe of his palm, before licking his fingers where he can still taste the filling. He shrugs again. “It’s all right,” he says, then flits Thomas a brief glance. He smiles, just a little. 

Thomas snorts and rolls his eyes, then huffs a soft laugh that smells of cigarettes. “You’re not being entirely honest, are you.”

“How would you know,” Adam asks.

“I just do. Tell me it’s not the best bloody pie you’ve ever tasted!” Thomas says. 

“It’s not,” Adam agrees. It’s the best goddamn pie he’ll probably ever have in his life, but he doesn’t say it, not yet, holding Thomas’ gaze before bursting out laughing. 

“What is it,” Thomas says. “What?”

Adam slaps him good-naturedly on the back to curb his alarm. Teasing Thomas has turned out to be a bit of a favorite past time though Adam often tries not to overdo it on account on how it leaves Thomas feeling rattled. There's also the fact they don't know each other all that well and his gentle ribbing might be taken the wrong way. He slaps him again, gentler this time. 

“It’s nothing, don’t worry about it,” he assures Thomas. “Thanks for the pie, by the way,” he adds over his shoulder, before disappearing through the side door into the kitchen. 

After a brief pause, Thomas follows him inside, closing the door behind him. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> I have no one to blame but [h311cat](https://twitter.com/h311cat). Initially this started as a joke but I feel like lately that's how all my fics begin anyway. Thank you to Ai-Lai for reading this monster and inspiring me to write it! Also to [StaticRaining](https://twitter.com/StaticRaining) who encouraged me as well every step of the way lol (probably a bad idea look where we are now, mate).
> 
> Some notes:
> 
> \- Caroline is actually Adam's older sister in canon but I've not really watched a lot of Girls (barely any at all) so her characterization is not canon compliant  
> \- Adam and Thomas are both eighteen in this  
> \- I just like the names Monty and Big Ben, there's no relevance here but you can think of Monty as the character played by Donut in American Made  
> \- There's a sequel already in the works set 15 years later which is why I had set this fic in the late 90s/early 2000  
> \- IDK why but I can't stop writing about them, is anyone else even writing about them but me, I need to know I feel like I dug myself a hole I can't get out of lol
> 
> Lastly, there was a Pushing Daisies/Waitress reference but you have to squint to see it!


End file.
